Tigers blank Bulldogs

HAMPTON — No doubt, Francisco Alejo may have set a Bulldog school record that he’d rather not have.

The senior punter notched a new school-record nine punt attempts in a 35-0 loss to South Hardin on Friday, Sept. 13 in Hampton.

In fact, he would have had 10 had it not been for a bad snap over his head that he had to go back and retrieve and fall on the ball as the Bulldogs fell to 0-3, 0-1 in Class 2A District 3 play. School records don’t indicate number of punts in a game, but no games as far back as the QuikStats era record a game with more than seven punts.

And once he got his punt off, the Tigers’ punt returner, Brayden Harris, ran freely, with eight returns for a total of 145 yards.

“It’s not one we’re proud of,” Bulldog head coach Andy Bruemmer said of the possible record by Alejo. “We’ve got to work on our punt coverage drills because we were not in our lanes and not doing our assignments and we’ll get it cleared up.”

The Bulldogs gave up their first possession on a fumble on third down and 14 from the 20 to set up South Hardin’s first score.

From there, the Bulldogs went three-and-out on their next four possessions before another fumble set up South Hardin in good position, only to see the Tigers lose a yard and fail on three straight pass attempts to give the ball up on downs.

“We didn’t have the ball security drills this week, we’ve been doing them every single week and we’ll put them back in the plan,” Bruemmer said.

The home team went on to go three-and-out two more times and on the Bulldogs’ final possession of the first half, Cal Heeren’s pass attempt was tipped and intercepted by John Walters.

“It comes down to doing our assignment, blocking and tackling and we’re going to get to work on Monday,” Bruemmer said. “I told the kids, ‘relax this weekend; we’re too good for this.’ We shouldn’t be playing like this. We’re too good.

“We spent a lot of time this Summer and a lot of sweat on the floor in the weight room. We’re going to go back and get it rolling.”

The second half didn’t start much better than the second and the Bulldogs were already in a hole when they were assessed a delay of game penalty for returning to the field late from the locker room.

And they had three more three-and-outs as South Hardin built a 28-0 lead to start the fourth quarter.

The first first down of the game was a 34-yard pass play from Heeren to Wyatt Sutter facing third down and 11 from the eight-yard line.

Only one more first down was gained before the Bulldogs were forced to punt once more.

They had negative rushing yards and netted 38 yards.

“We just didn’t execute tonight and that was evident by the score,” Bruemmer said. “We backed out defense up the whole second half. We crossed the 50 only one single time.

“It comes down to do…executing our job and we’ve got to get back to work and get that straightened out.”

Next up for the Bulldogs (0-3) is a road trip to Highway 3 rivals Clarion-Goldfield (1-2).

“I’ll took a look at them (soon) and we’ll see what they have,” Brummer said of the Cowboys. “Our problems are that we need to fix us. It’s not what other people are doing, it’s what we’ve got to fix the issues we’re having.”

SH               7     14       7       7        -     35

H-D              0       0       0       0        -       0

FIRST QUARTER

SH– Waylen Butler 1 run (W. Butler kick) 8:57

SECOND QUARTER

SH – Thain Friest (W. Butler kick) 9:32

SH– W. Butler (W. Butler kick) 1:42

THIRD QUARTER

SH – Beau Butler 10 pass from Dalton Lake (W. Butler kick) 11:58

SH – Dante Dolash 5 pass from Lake (W. Butler kick) 0:34

TEAM STATISTICS

                                             SH            H-D

First downs                              7                2

Rushes-yards                 20-120       26-(28)

Passing                               290              66

Comp-att-int                  28-48-4      10-18-1

Punts-avg.                       4-34.3        9-35.6

Fumbles-lost                         3-2             4-2

Penalties-yards                   5-70           4-35

INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS

RUSHING – SH, Waylen Butler 18-35-2, Thain Friest 6-11-1, Nathan Coffman 2-10-0, Beau Butler 2-8-0, Michael Fuller 1-2-0, Dalton Lake 2-(13)-0. H-D, Ozzy Johnstone 1-3-0, Max O’Dell 10-0-0, Jaycob Martzahn 2-(1)-0, Malyk Schunk 2-(2)-0, Cal Heeren 11-(28)-0. PASSING – SH, Lake 9-21-2-126-0, Brayden Harris 1-1-0-1-0. H-D, Heeren 10-18-0-66-1. RECEIVING – SH, B. Butler 4-53-1, Friest 1-26-0, Harris 1-25-0, Dante Dolash 2-25-1, Tyler Briggs 1-1-0, W. Butler 1-(3)-0. H-D, Wyatt Sutter 2-36-0, Schunk 3-10-0, Jordan Severs 2-10-0, Martzahn 2-8-0, Johnstone 1-2-0. TACKLES – SH, B. Butler 6-0-6, Friest 6-0-6, W. Butler 5-1-5.5, Harris 4-1-4.5, Fuller 4-0-4, Gavin Ridout 3-0-3. H-D, Mario De La Cruz 4-11-9.5, Logan Walker 5-6-8, Logan Pfeffer 2-10-7, Sutter 2-5-4.5, Kale Folkerts 1-6-4, Carson Miller 0-7-3.5, Anthony Hernandez 1-3-2.5. TFL – SH, W. Butler 3.5, B. Butler 2, Dolash, Friest, Nick Terry 0.5. H-D, Walker 3, Sutter 2, Pfeffer 2, Folkerts, Hernandez. SACKS – SH, W. Butler 3, B. Butler, Dolash, Friest. H-D, Folkerts, Pfeffer, Sutter. FUMBLE RECOVERIES – SH, W. Butler, Harris. H-D, None. INTERCEPTIONS – SH, John Walters. H-D, None.