HUMBOLDT — Things were looking rosy early on for Humboldt High Friday.
The Cubs, hosting Council Grove in their Class 2A playoff game, had started like gangbusters.
Cub senior quarterback Blake Ellis gave the home crowd an early charge, bursting through on a 60-yard touchdown on a fourth-and-two gamble barely two minutes into the game.
But things soured from there.
Council Grove knotted the score on an extended drive late in the first quarter, after which both teams struggled holding onto the ball.
Humbold’s next drive ended in a fumble recovery, as did Council Grove’s. And then so did Humboldt’s.
But the game truly turned just before halftime, when the Braves scored with no time left in the half. Council Grove’s defense was fully locked in by then, shutting out Humboldt after intermission in a 31-8 victory.
The loss ends Humboldt’s season at 10-1 in the sectional round of the Class 2A playoffs, the third straight year Humboldt has made it this far in the postseason.
“We believed we were good enough to win the game, but we knew we had to keep from committing penalties and turnovers,” Humboldt head coach Logan Wyrick said. “We’ve been very sound for the most part throughout the year with not committing turnovers, but it reared its ugly head tonight.”
A critical sequence late in the second quarter put Humboldt behind the 8-ball for the balance of the night.
After successfully pulling off a fake punt and securing a first down, Humboldt saw its chances to break the 8-8 deadlock go awry with a holding penalty and quarterback sack with less than a minute on the clock.
Things went from bad to worse when the Braves’ Landon Dody broke off a long punt return to set Council Grove up at the Cub 32-yard line, but with no timeouts remaining and 25 seconds on the clock.
Council Grove quarterback Luke Stewart found Levi Waring on a perfectly placed throw down the right side. Waring stumbled to the turf at the Cub 2, but was still in bounds.
The Braves raced to the line of scrimmage as Stewart spiked the ball with 6 seconds left, much to the chagrin of Humboldt’s coaching staff, who contended the spike should’ve been considered a backward lateral and fumble.
“You’ve gotta go straight down (with the throw). To us, it looked like he fumbled it to the left, which was a lateral,” Wyrick said.
