'Jays clinch second NAIA playoff ticket
No. 15 Tabor survives 30-29 road scare at St. Mary, draw No. 1 Sioux Falls
By RYAN RICHTER
Sports writer
Even after securing their first-ever KCAC football title, the Bluejays were still looking down the barrel of a loaded gun Saturday at Leavenworth.
If Tabor left without a victory over the pesky hosting St. Mary Spires, Hillsboro would be the only place the title meant anything.
With a Spires win, the biggest highlight for the Bluejays would be capturing the title with Tabor dropping out of the mandatory top 20.
Tabor wins, a second consecutive ticket to the NAIA playoffs was for the taking.
The Bluejays (9-1, 8-1 KCAC) had not only the Spires (3-6 KCAC) to battle, but disputable officiating as well.
St. Mary did everything it could but Tabor did a little more, knocking out a 30-29 win to set up a date Saturday with the top-ranked Sioux Falls (S.D.) Cougars.
"When you have something to play for, the people that you're playing against want to try to take it from you," Tabor coach Mike Gardner said. "St. Mary did everything they could to do that."
With 22 carries for a game-high 92 yards, Roger Butler put the Bluejays in front 7-0, capping a seven-play 45-yard drive with an 11-yard touchdown.
The Bluejay offense, led by the 2004 assistant coach of the year Dustin Miller, rolled up 474 yards for the game.
Marcus Manny added a 31-yard field goal to stretch Tabor's lead to 10-0 with 8:54 left in the first half.
Fully aware of the Bluejays' quickness to strike, the Spires dominated the clock, controlling the ball more than 30:00 longer than Tabor.
The bad part was St. Mary's 324 yards of offense, 265 coming from the arm of Josh Harvey, wasn't getting anywhere early on.
By the end of the first quarter, thanks to a suffocating Bluejay defense, St. Mary hadn't even moved the ball 10 yards.
The Spires finally struck however, with Harvey hitting wideout Richard Cooper for another 11-yard score to finish a 56-yard drive that took 9:16.
Cooper caught seven passes for a game-high 127 yards and three touchdowns, single-handedly keeping St. Mary in the game.
Despite the clock heavily favoring the Spires, the Bluejays still had the 10-7 lead at the break with both penalties and an interception slowing them down.
Tabor cleaned it up the second half and pulled away, scoring on the opening drive.
Ricky Ishida was 26 for 50 for 281 yards and a touchdown while getting picked off three times. Nine of his passes went to Layne Frick, who had a team-high 120 yards.
A 55-yard bomb from Ishida to Caleb Marsh again put Tabor in front by 10, 17-7, 1:33 into the second half.
St. Mary came storming back to knot the game at 17, using a 23-yard field goal and a Tabor interception which set Cooper up for the game-tying touchdown with 44 seconds left in the third quarter.
Already with their hands full defending the pass, the Spires had an equally hard time slowing down Tabor's run with Butler and Ted Telemaque.
Bluejay linebacker Jake Schenk hasn't carried the football since his high school days at Smith Center.
That changed Saturday on a fake punt with Schenk busting loose on a fourth-and-three for a 30-yard gain.
Ishida aired it out for Jeff McKinnon on a 24-yard bullet to give Tabor first-and-goal at the five.
Butler plowed in on the next play to push the Bluejay lead to 24-17 with 13:12 to go in the game.
Telemaque got his chance after Harvey floated a pass right to CJ Hill on the Spires' first play of the ensuing drive.
Two darts for a combined 36 yards from Ishida to Marsh and Frick, and Tabor was knocking on the door again, barely a 1:30 after the Butler touchdown.
Facing a second-and-six, Telemaque took it in from 15 to give the Bluejays what seemed to be a cozy 30-17 lead.
The Spires wouldn't go quietly though, with Harvey engineering a six-play 75-yard drive in 2:38 to cut the lead back down to seven on a 19-yard touchdown to Cooper.
Had it not been for Caleb Mason breaking through to block the PAT, Tabor would have found itself battling uphill.
Harvey went deep for Jon Quisenberry on a 37-yard touchdown, leaving the game up in the air with 6:26 to play and the Spires still in it.
That was plenty of time, but Ishida barely picked up a pivotal first down on fourth-and-short.
Ishida's second longest pass of the day, a 34-yarder to Frick, eventually allowed Tabor to run out the clock and preserve the win.
"We helped them a little bit in the first half," Gardner said. "Our guys really responded in the second half, though. It was a real exciting football game. The officiating in the game was probably the Achilles' heel of the whole thing."
The KCAC champion Bluejays will depart today for South Dakota in a definite David vs. Goliath match.
"Anytime you're conference champion and have a chance to go on in the post-season and work for something beyond the regular season it's definitely a great opportunity," said Gardner. "Last time I checked, David won.
"You don't get very many opportunities to play the number-one team in the country. Somebody's got to play them so it might as well be us."
Saturday's showdown with the 10-0 Cougars is scheduled for 1 p.m.
