The Red Devils struggled with penalties and mental errors on their way to a 12-7 loss in Beaver on Friday, Sept. 20. Grand led 7-0 at half time, but the advantage could have much greater, if not for two interceptions by the Beaver defense among other Red Devil errors.
“Offensively we had needless penalties and mental errors – I mean we had three false starts in a row at one point” Grand assistant coach Ron Dolphin said. “Another series we had first down at the 18-yard line and had a 14-yard run brought back by holding so we had first and 20 at the 28 instead of first and goal at the four.”
Beaver scored 12 points in the second half and held Grand off the scoreboard to pick up the win, giving the two teams identical 4-1 records overall, but more importantly putting the Beavers in the driver’s seat with a 2-0 record in 2A South play.
“It was a huge loss for us to beat ourselves,” Dolphin said. “Don’t take too much away from Beaver, but we’re a much better football team than that.”
The Red Devils also lost senior starting quarterback, kicker and safety Jacob Francis to a broken leg. Senior Koi Cook moved from running back to quarterback to finish the game Friday and junior Tanner White has also seen action at quarterback, albeit with the outcome already decided.
The Red Devils are scheduled to return home to play Enterprise at 7 p.m., Friday, Sept. 27. The Wolves have the same 4-1, 2-0 record as Beaver after defeating South Sevier 32-22 on Friday, Sept. 20.
“They’re coming off a big win so they’ll be motivated and play hard,” Dolphin said.
The Red Devils now likely must go undefeated the rest of the regular season and hope the Beavers lose twice in region play in order to win the region title and avoid juggernaut South Summit until the state title game, Dolphin said.
“We’ve got to do the little things right,” he said. “If we do there’s no reason we shouldn’t run the table. We don’t have to change anything really, just clean up the sloppiness.”
