With less than two minutes remaining in the game, Black Hills led 14-9 and had North Thurston on the ropes with a third and long and less than two minutes to play in the game.
North Thurston quarterback Zachary Peddy found Luke Bowser on a deep slant, and he took it all the way to the endzone for the game-winning touchdown in a 17-14 Black Hills’ loss.
Black Hills led most of the game, but in the end, they lacked one thing that they will be working on going into next week.
“Discipline,” Black Hills coach Garrett Baldwin said. “I definitely (feel like we let this one slip away) and it’s again, all right back to discipline. If we would have had more discipline, we would have taken care of the ball better, we would have finished those drives and we would have came out on top.”
Black Hills quarterback Jaxsen Beck had two touchdown passes, but also had an interception in the first quarter and a fumble in the red zone in the fourth quarter.
“It was definitely a plan to have the pass game set up the run game a bit and we took advantage of the leverage again,” Baldwin said. “Jaxsen Beck did a phenomenal job spreading the ball around but we’ve got to do a better job. We’ve got to take care of the ball. We’ve also got to do a better job eating some food and getting some sleep, working and not cramping, all that fun stuff but they were too. Hats off to North Thurston, they did a great job.”
North Thurston scored the first points of the game with a field goal. Black Hills gained the lead early in the second quarter when Beck found Maddox Hodge for a touchdown pass and a conversion run by Jacob Weller put the Wolves up 8-3.
The Rams answered back with a 2-yard touchdown run by Jason Donaldson Jr., but the conversion failed and North Thurston’s lead was 9-8, and it wouldn’t make it to halftime. Beck hit Weller on a swing pass out of the back field for a 14-9 lead at halftime.
Neither team scored in the third quarter. After Beck’s fumble, the Wolves got the ball back after a Rams’ punt and got the ball inside the red zone, but penalties pushed them to the 20-yard line on fourth down. Jude Bender attempted a 35-yard field goal for the Wolves that was short, giving the Rams’ the ball back for the winning score.
“We got a lot better from last week. I told the guys at the end of the game the most disciplined team is going to win and we didn’t play with enough discipline, didn’t take care of the football good enough,” Baldwin said. “Our defense played really well, showed a lot of improvement, played together, made fewer mistakes. (We) flush those two big post plays and our defense played really great.”
Black Hills (0-2) hosts Rochester on Friday in the opening Evergreen Conference game of the season.
