Turnovers make winning football games difficult in general.
When your team commits five in a half and six for a game it’s virtually impossible to overcome — just ask Skyline head coach Mat Taylor after Friday’s 31-17 loss to Bellevue.
“It’s a bitter taste, but it’s like what do you do,” Taylor said. “It’s unfortunate that we had all those turnovers, but Bellevue helped create them and you’ve got to give them an immense amount of credit.”
The Spartans, who were tied 17-17 at halftime with the nationally ranked Wolverines, struggled against Bellevue’s stingy defense in the second half. They turned the ball over five times, including twice inside their opponent’s 20 yard line.
None of those turnovers was more crucial, however, than the interception quarterback Max Browne threw into the arms of Bellevue linebacker Sean Constantine.
Down 24-17, with 27 seconds left in the third quarter, Constantine stepped in front a short pass from Browne and returned it 45 yards for a touchdown.
“Max could look on film and say, ‘He dropped back, I should have thrown the wide route,’ but he made a great play and nobody was keeping him down – he was going to score,” Taylor said.
Skyline kept fighting, but squandered scoring opportunities in the fourth quarter, fumbling once at the goal line and turning it over on downs another time on Bellevue’s 11-yard line.
Skyline, which earned 358 yards of total offense — the exact amount as Bellevue — took game’s first lead via Damien Greene’s 1-yard TD run.
Bellevue fought back to take a 17-7 lead on touchdown runs of 16 and 14 yards from Andy Boulware and Joey Moore. But the Spartans rallied to tie the game in the final 3 minutes of the second quarter, scoring on Sean McDonald’s 30-yard field goal and a 14-yard TD pass from Browne to Nic Splendorio.
Browne ended the game completing 24 of 34 passes for 306 yards, one TD and two INTs.
Bellevue quarterback Tyler Hasty was 5 of 9 for 151 yards. He also rushed for a 4-yard score on Bellevue’s first drive of the second half.
“It was a typical Bellevue-Skyline game, you never know what’s going to happen,” said Bellevue coach Butch Goncharoff, whose team beat the Spartans for the first time since 2006 and moved to 2-0.
Skyline, which fell to 1-1, takes to the road next week to face Lake Oswego, Ore.
“We have to turn it around,” said Taylor, noting his next opponent is one of the top two or three teams in Oregon. “We can’t afford to take a breather because we got Lake Oswego and then Issaquah.”
