Tre Jones’ 255 yards, 4 TDs send Oswego East past Oswego in crosstown showdown with playoff implications

OSWEGO – Tre Jones held the gold crosstown traveling football aloft in his right hand amid a mad Oswego East mosh pit of players and students.

It was Jones’ feet, however, that truly dazzled Friday.

Aided by the long-awaited return of battering ram backfield mate Oshobi Odior, Jones turned in a spectacular performance in a crosstown game with rare playoff implications.

Jones ran for 255 yards and four long touchdowns, and Oswego East scored 35 consecutive points to storm back from an early two-score deficit for a 35-21 win over visiting rival Oswego in their 18th crosstown meeting.

In doing so, Oswego East (5-3, 2-2 Southwest Prairie West) became playoff eligible – and eliminated Oswego (3-5, 1-3) from playoff contention for the first time since 2010.

“This one was a little bit different,” said Jones, a Navy recruit. “We clinched a playoff spot, got bragging rights in the city. And we knocked them off.”

Oswego East, which lost the first 15 crosstown games, has won two of the last three. The significance of the matchup wasn’t lost on Odior, who had been sidelined since Week 1 with torn ligaments and a sprain in his ankle.

But Odior vowed that he would return for this Friday’s game, made good on his word and combined with the speedy Jones for an unstoppable force in the backfield. The 6-foot-2, 244-pound senior barreled his way to 88 yards on 16 carries, with the go-ahead 3-yard TD run making it 21-14 with 3:22 left in the third quarter.

Oshobi converted a fourth-and-short the play before his score, after Jones had scampered for 16 yards on fourth-and-10 to keep alive the go-ahead, 14-play drive coming out of halftime.

“This means everything, especially coming off six weeks of not playing, watching my teammates from the sidelines,” Odior said. “I made the decision that I was coming back probably last week. It didn’t matter how I was feeling, I was going to come out and play no matter what. This feels amazing.”

Oswego, which had to win its final two games to keep its playoff streak alive, came out strong in the game played in a steady mist.

Cruz Ibarra’s 1-yard TD run capped off an 11-play, 80-yard march on the game’s opening drive. The Panthers recovered a subsequent onside kick, and Noah Vera broke off a 38-yard TD run for a 14-0 lead with 3:11 left in the first quarter.

“Proud of our guys for coming out hot,” Oswego coach Brian Cooney said.

But the Panthers ultimately had no answer for the one-two backfield punch of Odior and Jones, who combined to run for more than 300 yards behind the blocking of linemen Orlando Woodhouse, Reggie McComb, Timothy Zywicki, Zachary Clarke and Timothy Savchuck.

“It made all the difference in the world [having Odior back],” Cooney said. “We were planning on him coming back, but you can’t simulate that. The kid is a house and he runs hard. When you insert a kid like that, it makes all the difference.”

It opened things up for Jones, whom Oswego could not keep up with in the open field.

He took a quarterback keeper 63 yards for a touchdown in the final minutes of the first quarter to close the Wolves within one score. And then he went 44 yards for another TD to make it 14-14 with 2:25 left in the second quarter, where it remained until halftime as Oswego missed a short field goal on the last play of the half.

“You saw the difference out there tonight,” Oswego East coach Tyson LeBlanc said. “You can’t just focus on No. 9 [Jones] when No. 23 [Odior] is back there.”

Jones for his part hardly paid any mind to the Wolves getting down 14 points early in such a huge game.

“From my perspective, we hadn’t had the opportunity to touch the ball,” he said. “So it was on our minds that they had 14 points. When it was time for us to respond, we did.”

Jones’ 73-yard TD run made it 28-14 in the first seconds of the fourth quarter, and he wasn’t done. Jones broke three leg tackles for a 20-yard TD run to finish off Oswego East’s scoring.

“He’s a tough kid,” LeBlanc said.

“One-two punch, it’s hard to account for both guys in the backfield,” Jones said. “As a friend, it was great having Oshobi back and as a player it means a lot. That’s a big body, you don’t see a lot of people wanting to tackle that.”

Ibarra was 18 for 36 passing for 239 yards and Deakon Tonielli caught nine passes for 81 yards for Oswego, which will miss the playoffs for the first time under Cooney.

“This is tough on many phases,” Cooney said.