JC drops fifth straight

Giving the ball away has been a problem for the Patriots, especially in conference losses to Bluffton and South Adams.

Friday night was a different story, but it didn’t produce the turn-around for which they were hoping.

Turnover ratio: Plus-four.

Point differential: Minus-two.

Jay County High School’s football team had a potential game-winning drive stall out at the 29-yard line as the Arlington Golden Knights handed it a 20-18 loss to ruin its homecoming celebration.

The Patriots, who had given the ball away eight times in their last three games, trailed by two after Arlington converted a two-point pass following its game-tying touchdown with 5:52 to play, but pushed down the field on a series of runs by Cole Stigleman and Michael Schlechty. They got inside the Golden Knights’ 30-yard line, only to have a broken play result in a 5-yard loss.

“We didn’t execute that, and then that puts you in a further down and distance,” said JCHS coach Tim Millspaugh of the play that was meant to be a run to Schlechty. “And we had had trouble throughout the game completing passes. And that obviously was not an ideal situation for us to be in. We didn’t execute and didn’t convert like we had hoped to.”

On fourth-and-eight, Paul Crenshaw broke through the Patriot line and sacked Holton Hill for a 12-yard loss.

Arlington then took a knee four times to run out the remainder of the clock.

The JCHS coaching staff felt that last kneel, at about the 23-yard line, came with one second left on the clock. But Millspaugh said that moment, or lack thereof, was one of a laundry list that could have turned the tide in his team’s favor.

“There were some things that I was frustrated with at the end of the game,” he said. “But whether its the officials, the clock guys, my use of the timeouts, stuff like that is part of football.

“You’ve got to control the things that you can control. We left it out there. And when you leave it out there, things can happen. And unfortunately it did.”

One area of continued trouble was the point-after-touchdown attempts, which ended up being the deciding factor in the game.

Arlington was just 1-for-3.

Jay County, 0-for-3.

The Golden Knights (6-2) got those game-winning points after Duane Cobb capped a spectacular effort on the ground with a 4-yard scoring run to pull them even. With a chance to take the lead, assistant coach Ryan Green — head coach Steve Moorman had to leave the team earlier in the day to deal with a family emergency in Arizona — made the decision to go for two. Quarterback Antuan Canady received the shotgun snap, took a moment to survey the defense and then hit Corion Washington just across the goal line in the middle of the field for a 20-18 lead.

Cobb carried the Arlington offense, which out-gained the Patriots by 20 yards despite giving the ball away on two fumbles and two interceptions, with 219 yards on 23 carries. Three of those turnovers came inside the JCHS 25-yard line and the other gave the home team outstanding field position to lead to its first second-half touchdown.

Cole Stigleman was the workhorse for Jay County with 147 yards on 26 carries. Schlechty ran for 79 yards on 13 attempts and reached the end zone on runs of 14, 4 and 2 yards.

The loss was the fifth in a row for the Patriots, who are now 2-6 overall and 1-4 in the Allen County Athletic Conference. They will close the regular season at home Friday against Heritage (1-7, 1-4 ACAC) before hosting Logansport (4-4) in the opening round of sectional play.

“A lot of your focus has to be on execution. And we definitely executed better tonight than we have in a while, especially when you look at both sides of the ball,” said Millspaugh. “So I really felt like tonight we did take steps forward. …

“Even when you make progress and you still don’t win those tight games, there’s that dejected feeling. And we’ve got to get to where our kids can get that win and feel good about themselves and believe that they can beat Logansport when we start the tournament the following week.”