The game that surprised me in 2003 was Easton beating Cumberland Valley. CV was loaded that season and everyone thought they would face NP the following week. Of course Easton had to play 2 games in 3 days including against NP's best team ever.
The 2003 Easton-Cumberland Valley state quarterfinal is on my shortlist of favorite games of all time. First time the Rovers were in the state playoffs in a decade, and it was probably the strongest performance against a really good opponent in the last half century. Easton came out of the gate guns blazing (took a 14-0 lead on their first two possessions) weathered a storm early in the second half, then put together huge drives at the end to win.
That Cumberland Valley team was loaded, but as was that Easton team. Ranking Easton teams in the state playoff era (1988-present) I think only the 1991 team with Mark Libiano and Juan Gaddy was more talented than the 2003 squad. And looking at the box score, I'm actually surprised how close the game was into the 4th quarter. Easton held Cumberland Valley to 195 yards on 48 rushing attempts, and CV only had 11 yards passing. Easton had over 400 yards of total offense - 305 on the ground. Fullback Brad Piperata had 195 yards on 19 carries and 3 TDs and tailback Ovid Goulbourne added 140 yards on 15 carries and 2 TDs (this wasn't an uncommon occurrence, the pair combined for 2,900 yards and 47 TDs on the season). Easton under Doug Powell also defended the Wing-T and option as well as any team in the state, and that Rover team had a pair of monster linebackers (Marcus Millen was 6'2 220 and Jason Groller was 6'4 245) who could really hit and stop the run. Both played awesome games against Cumberland Valley. They helped hold Dan Lawlor to under 89 yards on 30 carries and of CV's 195 rushing yards, 66 came on one play. Easton wasn't very big on the defensive line, but they had speed there, then big thumpers at linebacker to stop the run. And offensively, Pip and Ovid were both big backs who were home run hitters once they got in the open field (Ovid ran a 4.48 at his Pro Day at West Virginia and got a cup of coffee with the Ravens - now he's an assistant Strength and Conditioning coach at Arizona working for his former college coach, Rich Rodriguez). Goulbourne in particular carried Easton in the 4th quarter, hitting a crease and going 55 yards untouched to put them ahead, then scoring a crazy, drag 5 defenders into the end zone TD to ice it in the final minutes.
Even in a losing effort the next week with North Penn, Piperata ran for 166 yards on 20 carries and Ovid had 157 on 23 carries. That teams Achilles heel was defending mobile quarterbacks, and Austin Hearns absolutely killed them (as did the Altoona QB in their regular season loss -- Altoona lost to PCC in the other state semifinal that year).That year was the first time that Easton ever had to play 2 games in 3 days (in 1991 and 1993, there was a week off at Thanksgiving, then the state Final 4). I think North Penn probably wins that game 8 out of 10 times anyway, but that was the year that P'Burg most affected the playoff game - because the coaching staff had never done it before. Even the next season, there was a much better system and routine for prepping both games and making sure guys were as healthy and rested as possible to play the state game. 2003 was the year that they had to kind of figure it out, and I don't think it went very well (as shown by losses to both P'Burg and North Penn). Again, North Penn was the better football team, but even with the short rest, Easton was their closest game of the season.
