BOURBON — The Bremen Lions came out on top of a football game that featured more turnovers than points. In the second Northern State Conference game for each team, Bremen (2-2, 1-1 NSC) got a 7-0 win over the host Triton Trojans (0-4, 0-2 NSC) in a contest that featured eight turnovers, four for each team. “We’re just happy to get the win,” Bremen coach Bob Holmes said. “We came in and played a real sloppy game, but we exited with a ‘W’. To play that bad, and still escape with a win, we’re excited. Well, we’re not excited, we’re content.” And all four of Bremen’s turnovers came at inopportune times, occurring within 10 yards of the end zone three times and the Triton 22-yard line the other. With that kind of bad luck, it’s easy to see how the Lions only won 7-0 despite outgaining the Trojans 254-81. “Our defense has been doing a nice job all year,” Holmes said. “Defense is not our issue. We need to execute better on offense and our special teams needs to get better. Our defense, the stats speak for themselves.” The defense actually set up the offense’s lone score. Having just thrown an interception at the Triton 5-yard line, the Bremen defense took the field with 1:20 remaining in the half. Instead of opting to go into the half in a scoreless tie, Triton senior quarterback Bryson Mosier threw the ball on 2nd-and-6 from the 20-yard line, leading to an interception by Bremen senior Bobby Cornett. After throwing an incompletion on first down, Bremen junior quarterback Kai Slough then hit senior Ethan Pike for a 15-yard touchdown, resulting in the only points of the game. “That wasn’t their fault,” Triton coach Rodney Younis said about the turnover late in the half. “I put that one on me. Generally, I’m a conservative coach down there (on our side of the field). We tried to get aggressive.” The pick was one of two thrown by Mosier, who finished the game completing 6 of 11 pass attempts for 17 yards. “He’s done a really nice job this year, but early on, he was getting some pressure,” Younis said about Mosier, who entered the game with eight touchdown passes and just one interception. “I think it flustered him a little bit.” In the first half, Triton mustered just 14 yards, but picked things up in the second, tallying 67. The biggest chunk of those yards came midway through the third quarter. Starting at their own 24-yard line, the Trojans marched 51 yards, with senior Cody Shively accounting for 34 of them, to the Bremen 25-yard line. But just when things looked good, the snap was mishandled and Bremen recovered it. “Bottom line is, turnovers killed us,” Younis said. “Obviously, that was what we talked about before we came out — it was going to come down to who was going to take care of the ball. It was wet conditions.” Despite all the miscues, Triton still had a chance late in the game. Starting at their own 30-yard line with 5:50 remaining, the Trojans got it down to the Bremen 36, when they faced a 4th-and-4 with 2:24 remaining. Following a timeout, Mosier went with a quick pass to Shively out of the backfield, but the play failed as he encountered a host of Lions along the sideline. “We had it drawn up right with the blocking scheme, but we didn’t block it right,” Younis said. “Cody’s our go-to guy. There were two options for us, and we thought, the way they were playing us, we thought we could get the edge and let Cody go one-on-one with the cornerback. But we missed the block.” Shively was Triton’s top offensive performer, rushing for 63 yards on 13 carries. But Bremen junior Eric Knepper was the top player of the night, going for 145 yards on 24 attempts. Despite the loss, Younis is seeing improvement in his team and hopes some additions next week will help at John Glenn. “Next week, we’re going to have more kids back,” he said. “Like I keep telling the kids, ‘Every week, we’re gaining depth, because we’re playing kids that realistically should be (junior varsity) players.’ They had to get thrown in because of certain situations. Next week, we’ll finally have close to a full squad.”
BREMEN 7, TRITON 0 B 0 7 0 0 — 7 T 0 0 0 0 — 0
B T 1st downs 12 6 Rushing yds 170 64 Passing yds 84 17 Comp-Att-Int 6-16-2 6-11-2 Total offense 254 81 Fumbles/lost 2/1 2/2 Penalties/yds 7/65 4/25.5 Punts/avg 2/35 4/37.3
Second Quarter B — Kai Slough 15 pass to Ethan Pike (Lucas Schlarb kick) 1:09, 7-0
