Friday night against I-80 rivals from Wilton was another tough game for the Comets.
What was a close game through 12 minutes turned into a Beaver clinic as Wilton took control of the game and never relinquished their grip in a 46-0 win.
“We shot ourselves in the foot too much early on more than anything,” Comet coach Jason Iske said. “We had five turnovers and turned it over on downs five times as well. Two of those turnovers led to touchdowns. It was just a lot of shooting ourselves in the foot.
“For the first quarter, our defense was playing pretty well. Then we gave up some big runs there as well. But the second quarter is when we started having our turnover problems.”
After Wilton punted the ball on the opening possession of the game, they scored touchdowns on five of their next six drives, with the lone straggler resulting in the end of the first half.
Two more touchdowns came directly at the Comets’ expense as they returned two interceptions for touchdowns.
It is fair to say that the Comets did get unlucky in some regard.
In addition to all of the turnovers, including two lost fumbles, West Liberty had golden opportunities to score in the redzone multiple times but could not convert.
“We got inside of their 10-yard line three times and we didn’t get any points out of it,” Iske said. “Our offense was able to move the ball when we weren’t turning it over. It was a combination of those turnovers and not being able to score inside the red zone when we were there.”
Junior quarterback Ryker Dengler was 14-27 for 194 yards and tallied an additional 13 yards on the ground.
The star of the offense was senior Jayce McHugh, who had one of the best performances of any player that night. He hauled in eight passes on 11 targets for 149 yards.
But at the end of the night, West Liberty traveled back home with another loss against a top-tier Class 1A team.
“(Wilton and Regina Catholic) are definitely both good teams. To me, if you look at the 1A landscape, they’ve got to be two of the better teams, especially in our area,” Iske said. “We knew we were playing some good teams right off the bat. But at the same time, as good as they were, I thought we played right there with them for a lot of the game. It’s just too many mistakes that you can’t have against good teams like that.”
Perhaps the best remedy is a home game.
West Liberty will finally get to play under their own lights when they take on West Burlington on September 8.
“We generally do have a good crowd. A good student section shows up usually, so hopefully that will give us some good momentum,” Iske said.
The Falcons have looked equally as impressive as the Comets’ last two teams. They are 2-0 with wins over Class A Wapello (46-6) and Class 3A Mount Pleasant (47-28).