North Hills recorded its second upset in as many weeks and avenged a regular-season loss with a 14-10 victory against North Allegheny last night in the quarterfinals of the WPIAL Class AAAA playoffs at Pine-Richland High School.

"The difference between this game and the game we played [in Week 9] is that we didn't make the same mistakes," said North Hills coach Jack McCurry, referring to the Indians' 28-3 loss to the Tigers. "... We weathered the storm."

North Hills (6-5) was seeded No. 12, while North Allegheny (9-2) was No. 4. The Indians upset No. 5 seed McKeesport last week.

North Hills will face top-seeded Gateway next week in the semifinals, at a site to be determined.

North Allegheny opened the scoring with a 26-yard field goal by Jackson Cox with 3:16 left in the first quarter. The Indians drove 65 yards on 12 plays before the drive stalled at the North Hills 9. Tigers tailback Alex Papson provided most of the yardage with 54 yards on seven carries.

North Hills drove 72 yards on six plays on its next possession to take 7-3 lead. Taylor Schmidt capped the drive with a 50-yard scoring strike to Scott Zubik. The score came with 1:21 left in the first.

Neither team scored in the second quarter, but the Tigers did drive to the North Hills 26 before halftime, but Papson was stopped on a fourth-down play. Papson finished the half with 68 yards on 12 carries.

North Allegheny's Olatunji Idowu returned the second-half opening kickoff to the North Hills 46. Seven plays later, the Tigers scored on an 18-yard pass from Justin Brozick to Dan Slivka. That gave North Allegheny a 10-7 lead with nine minutes left in the third.

North Hills scored the deciding points with a nine-play, 56-yard scoring drive. Mike Sivak capped the drive with a 4-yard run with 6:47 left in the game. Sivak rushed for 64 yards on 11 carries in the second half, and finished the game with 86 yards on 15 carries.

"Sivak was the starting tailback until he tore an ACL in the third game," McCurry said. "He was slow to recover and is now just starting to come around. He was hot so we kept running him."

North Allegheny took the ensuing kickoff and drove 55 yards to the North Hills 14. The drive ended when Papson fumbled and Josh Neurhr recovered for the Indians.

Rob Kalkstein threw for 235 yards and 3 touchdowns to lead the top-seeded Gators (11-0) to a convincing victory over the ninth-seeded Indians (5-6) in a quarterfinal game played at Norwin High School.

The victory earns Gateway its third consecutive semifinal berth.

Kalkstein, who completed 8 of 14 passes, connected with Brendon Felder on touchdown passes of 83 and 38 yards. He also threw a 54-yard scoring strike to Armstead Williams. Felder had three receptions for 121 yards.

Felder also scored on a 2-yard run. The Gators also scored on a 17-yard run by Markie'd Jones.

Penn Hills scored its only points on a 25-yard field goal by Eric Vincent in the second quarter.

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