Thanks to several hard-nosed plays by both sides, the opening quarter of the contest remained scoreless until Bulldogs senior quarterback Chorbin Cressler scored on a well-designed bootleg play around the left side to put his team ahead 6-0 with 58 seconds left in the opening quarter.<\/p>\n
Mancos junior running back Chase Moore struck back with a 2-yard touchdown run of his own on the ensuing drive to make the score 6-6 with 6:55 left in the first half, and the score remained tied until Bailey scored on a 68-yard touchdown run with 1:13 left in the first half.<\/p>\n
\u201cMe and Chorbin (Cressler) and Gauge (Thompson) are a three-headed monster that can run,\u201d said Bailey, who broke multiple tackles and outran several Mancos defenders during his long run. \u201cWe have a great line to follow behind, and we did this as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trailing 12-6 heading into the halftime break, Mancos players listened to an inspiring halftime speech by coaches and benefited from a series of halftime adjustments that sought to put the ball in Moore\u2019s hands open up the passing game.<\/p>\n
Although the strategy appeared to be working when Moore broke came through with several first-down runs after receiving snaps out of the wildcat formation, a drop of a sure touchdown pass by Cova and multiple costly penalties stalled attempts by the Bluejays to even the score.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like we made a couple of mistakes in key moments,\u201d Mancos coach Josh Gardner said. \u201cYou have to hand it to Dove Creek \u2013 they came off the ball hard, and they were fired up. I have a lot of respect for them and the way they played tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
In spite of their mistakes, the Bluejays appeared poised to pick up a win when they pulled ahead 14-12 with 5:57 left in third quarter after a short touchdown run and subsequent two-point conversation by Moore.<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs responded with an impressive drive however, which culminated with a 6-yard touchdown run by sophomore receiver Kade Hankins that came on a fourth-and-goal play with 11:39 left in the contest.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an X-counter play,\u201d said Hankins, describing his game-winning score. \u201cThe line did a great job of blocking there. It was all them.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the fourth quarter ticked away with Dove Creek leading 18-14, the Bluejays had opportunities to take the lead, yet were stymied when sophomore quarterback Ayden Mathews threw interceptions to Hankins and Cressler during the game\u2019s final six minutes.<\/p>\n
Moore\u2019s inability to break away for long touchdown runs also seemed to rattle Mancos, which has become accustomed scoring several long touchdowns each game this season.<\/p>\n \u201cOur defense played sound football,\u201d Baughman said. \u201cWe really worked on wrapping up. That was one of the things that we didn\u2019t do well last week against (Sanford). (Moore) is a great running back, so we just focused on tackling drills this week, and we came out and played disciplined football.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe just had to get our heads on straight and play our game,\u201d said Cressler. \u201cWe wanted to keep our mouths closed and play our game.\u201d<\/p>\n Now 4-1 on the season, Dove Creek will prepare for a home matchup against Norwood on Nov. 12. In the event that the Bulldogs win, they figure to be one of eight teams that qualify for the playoffs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got to get some pressure on Norwood quarterback (Tyler Wytulka) because he can throw the ball,\u201d Baughman said. \u201cOur defensive line has to get in the backfield and force some of his passes to go errant.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to not make mistakes and keep the ball off the ground,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cWe had a couple of bad snaps and a couple of turnovers (against Dove Creek). If we can control the ball, we will be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" THE \u2019DOGS Dove Creek Bulldogs benefit from three turnovers and several big hits to defeat Mancos Bluejays, 18-14<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[80,926,28,37,29,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-50515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dove-creek","tag-football","tag-headlines","tag-mancos-high-school","tag-newsletter","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87766,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50515\/revisions\/87766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50515"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=50515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}