Pittsburgh Central Catholic wins Pennsylvania top 25 matchup over North Allegheny

WEXFORD, Pennsylvania – Pittsburgh Central Catholic and North Allegheny entered Friday night both ranked in the upper half of the SBLive Pennsylvania Power 25 but it was Central Catholic who came away with a 50-22 road win.

Running back Elijah Faulkner ran for four touchdowns and 229 yards for the Vikings, who came in ranked No. 5 in the SBLive Pennsylvania Power 25.

Quarterback Payton Wehner, who entered the game as the leading passer in the WPIAL, completed 11 of 17 passes for 152 yards and two touchdowns for the Vikings.

“I think it was the practice that helped us win,” Wehner said “I think we were confident in our ability to come out and just play our game. We weren’t worried about our opponent, and we played our game.”

North Allegheny, ranked No. 11 in the SBLive Pennsylvania Power 25, scored first and went up 8-0 after a 3-yard rushing touchdown by Tyree Alualu, but Central Catholic answered with the first two of Faulkner’s scores to take a lead before the Tigers tied the game.

Wehner then threw his two touchdown passes to Cole Sullivan to give the Vikings a 29-15 halftime lead.

“I think they were rushing me pretty hard, and both of those plays were both tunnel screens,” Wehner said. “I thought that if we could get the ball out quick and we were able to get our lineman out in front of Cole that he could score on both.”

On the defensive end for the Vikings, defensive back Xavier Thomas had two interceptions against Tigers starting quarterback Logan Kushner, with one in each half.

Kushner completed 14 of 24 passes for 170 yards while rushing for two touchdowns.

Faulkner added two more touchdowns in the second half to widen the lead for Central Catholic.

Central Catholic will host Canon-McMillan at Carnegie Mellon University next Friday while North Allegheny will be at home once again when rival Pine-Richland comes to town.

“I know we have another 6A opponent next week as well and I think it’ll be a big game to show people what we can do,” Wehner said. “We just need to be relaxed and be uptempo.” 

Throughout the past week, the talk around the WPIAL football world was North Allegheny trolling Pittsburgh Central Catholic on social media. Some of the jabs from North Allegheny that they posted on social media included a game-day graphic calling Central Catholic the “Western PA Vikings”.

Then the social media team asked current players walking out of the locker room during a practice where they live as most of the players answered “Wexford, born and raised.”

The trash talk helped sparked the hype of the game of two undefeated teams.

But despite all of the banter, Central Catholic was the team with the last laugh.