Tri Cities is out of Washington and they were labeled the hottest team in the NIFL according to the league website. If you ask me Odessa and Everett are the hottest teams in the league cause they both just finished their regular season 14-0. That's pretty hot if you ask me.
For some reason we always play twice as good at home, which is good and normal I guess. Our defense came up with some huge plays. In the first half our MLB, Tim Daniels forced a fumble and our DE Luke Scarborough picked it up and ran it back for a TD. A defensive TD is always huge for your offense and pumps up your defense as well. Right before that play I ran a QB sneak in. Askew, Deans, and I jumped up on the wall, straddled it and "rowed the boat" for our end zone dance. That plus the fumble put us up 14-0.
After a trade of scores, our offense suffered and they came back with two straight scores. We failed to score right before halftime on a reverse. Next time we'll play the end of the half smarter; I wanted to run a quicker pass before we tried the reverse on the goal line. But sometimes I don't get to make all the calls. At halftime the score was nodded at 21.
We got the ball in the second half and were jump started by Jesse Obert's 49-yard field goal. Obert played awesome going one for one on FGs and 7 for 7 on PATs. However, Tri Cities would score on their opening drive giving them the 28-24 lead.
Then we struck back when I hooked up with Tobias Deans for one of his 5 TD catches on the night. Then disaster strikes for Tri Cities when their QB threw it right into the hands of Tim Daniels. On the next play I hit Tobias again for a TD. We're up 38-28.
Tri Cities bounced back and scored on just two plays cutting the score back to 3. We went on an impressive drive in which we converted a 4th and 3, ending on another Tobias TD catch. Tri Cities responds again and scores another TD. 45-43 Marshals.
On our next drive, we pretty much sealed the game. It was a 10-play drive, which is a long drive for an indoor game that took off 4:47. It was capped off by the final TD reception for Tobias Deans.
We were in pretty good shape with 1:31 left to go and up 10 points. After a huge sack by Tim Daniels, Ron Carpenter picked off the last attempt by Tri-Cities securing the Marshal victory.
I was 22-35 for 200 yards on 5 tds and 1 int. Deans had 9 catches for 101 yards and 5 tds, Jeff Jourdan 6 for 52, Askew 5 for 35, and Wyatte 2 for 12.
This was a big win for us coming off the River City loss on the road. Tri Cities had 9 wins coming into this game and we played well as a team. Next we travel to Casper, Wyoming to take on the Wyoming Calvary who has a 10-3 record.
This win over Tri Cities makes us officially in the playoffs. I'm not sure if we were in for sure yet, but now I'm positive. I heard some rumors that we might be hosting a home playoff game, but I'm not sure how certain that is. I guess we just have to keep our ears open. I think I have it figured out to if we win versus Wyoming we will be playing at Dayton for the first round of the playoffs. If we lose I'm not sure of the scenario.
I do know that we need to get rested this week because our game is on July 4th, which is a Monday and the playoff start that following Saturday, so we have two less days to get prepared for our first round game.