The No. 5 Toledo football team took a jab before delivering a haymaker early, beating No. 12 Kittitas 48-21 at Kelso’s Schroeder Field on Friday to keep its season going.
The Coyotes opened the scoring on a long touchdown pass by do-it-all quarterback Josh Rosbaach. After that, the Riverhawks pounded in 28 straight points to build an insurmountable lead by the time the first quarter ended, and only grew it from there.
Geoffrey Glass and Ethen Carver both found the end zone twice in the first half, and Glass scored again in the third quarter, finishing with 155 rushing yards on 25 carries. Zane Ranney put up 63 yards, Carver had 49, and quarterback Austin Norris ran for 61 yards and a score while also tossing for a touchdown.
“Overall, the front blocked really well,” Toledo coach Mike Christensen said. “They were getting a little bit of penetration in the second half, little things that we can clean up. But overall, I couldn’t be more proud of the way our offensive line played up front. And our guys ran the ball hard. We just played a good, strong, physical football game.”
On the other side of the ball, Rosbach threw for three touchdowns, but had no other completions on the night. And after a week of preparing for Kittitas’ quarterback to scramble, the Riverhawks held him to just 18 rushing yards — a number that was deep in the negatives before one long gain in the second half pushed him back above zero.
“I think we did a good job overall,” Christensen said. “Keeping him to 18 yards, if you would have told me that before the game, I’d have said we’d win pretty easily, and that’s what happened.”
Bayron Rodriguez came up with a big play on defense, forcing a fumble and recovering it to stall at Kittitas drive. He also blocked a punt, which Trevin Gale jumped on and took back to set Toledo up with good field position.
Toledo now gets a trip all the way across the state for its next matchup, facing No. 4 Chewelah (Jenkins), which is coming off a bye.
“That’s what you want to do; you’ve got to take care of business at home,” Christensen said. “Now we’ve got a long trip to Spokane. We’re going to prepare hard, do our homework.”
