Aug
Ticat comeback falls short in Regina
Courtesy Hamilton Spectator:
They completed the comeback, but the Ticats couldn’t close the deal.
After falling behind 23-0, Hamilton rallied to tie the game in the second half before giving up two late scores to lose 33-23.
It could have been much, much worse.
For one half of football, they looked like the terrible Tabbies of old. The Cats couldn’t muster a single first down in the first half and had minus-seven yards of total offence through 30 minutes. They looked as bad as the weather on a frigid and rainy August evening where the game-time temperature was 12 Celsius.
“Ugly,” was how Ticat centre Marwan Hage described the team’s first-half debacle.
The Roughriders opened the scoring with just under six minutes remaining in the first when short-yardage quarterback Stephen Jyles completed a one-yard touchdown pass. On the next series, Ticat quarterback Quinton Porter fumbled while being sacked, setting up the ‘Riders at the Ticat 31. Porter injured his left knee on the play, aggravating the MCL he hurt at the end of last season.
He was likely coming out of the game anyway, having completed just one of his first five attempts for three yards. Head coach Marcel Bellefeuille replaced Porter with veteran Kevin Glenn to start the second quarter. His first drive ended when the Cats conceded a safety to make it 12-0 ‘Riders.
The ‘Riders then marched the ensuing kickoff to the end zone to put the Tabbies into a 19-0 hole. A single on the kickoff made it 20-0. A field goal as time expired in the half made it 23-0 and the Cats looked deader than dead.
Bellefeuille said he didn’t give a fire and brimstone speech at halftime.
“I told them for us to be the team we want to be this year, each player has to show me we can be that team and the second half will determine that. We won the second half 23-10, so it shows something about the resiliency of this team,” he said.
The Cats got on the board early in the third when Nick Setta kicked a 41-yard field goal and, on their next possession, Arland Bruce made a spectacular, one-handed catch on a 49-yard strike from Glenn that resulted in a touchdown. Bruce’s first points as a Ticat — the celebration was decidedly subdued — made the score 23-10.
Two more Setta kicks made it 23-16 by the end of the third and then it was time for the Markeith Knowlton turnover. For the third straight week, Knowlton made a key fourth-quarter play, blocking a punt the visitors recovered on the ‘Rider eight yard-line. DeAndra’ Cobb punched it in and the comeback was complete.
But the ‘Riders scored on Weston Dressler’s 13-yard run with 6:30 left and added another field goal for a 33-23 final and 30,630 fans at Mosaic Stadium went home soggy but happy.
“I think they worked so hard — we had to block a kick, we had to move the ball on offence, we had to get two-and-outs on defence — to get back in it that the tank got empty,” Bellefeuille said.
Hamilton enters the bye week at 4-3, good enough for second in the East. But despite being encouraged by the comeback, Bellefeuille said the loss is still tough to swallow.
“We’re out here to try and win a game, not just make it respectable,” he said. “We didn’t do that.”
