Bulldogs lose game to Wolves,

but gain valuable experience

By James Tilson

Sports writer

8-30-2018

GUNNISON—Another week, another top-ranked team.

The Gunnison Valley Bulldogs hosted the North Sevier Wolves, ranked No. 5 in 2-A, last Friday Aug. 24 and lost 14-53.

Bulldog Head Coach Jake Pay sees a silver lining to facing top-ranked competition to start the season.

“Both Milford and North Sevier are going to make noise in the post season,” he said. “This will help us down the road, because we see the things we need to work on to be successful.”

One of the things the Bulldogs will need to improve on is incurring costly penalties. In their game against the Wolves, Gunnison racked up 11 penalties for a total of 111 yards lost. This contributed to their inability to finish drives, going 3-13 on a third-down conversion, and 0-2 on a fourth down.

This coming week, Coach Pay said the team will focus on eliminating mistakes. “The big thing moving into this week is playing mistake-free. We did some really great things; we just could not sustain it like we needed to because of the mistakes.”

With the offense unable to sustain drives, the defense stayed on the field too long, and wound up giving up a lot of yards through the air for the second week in a row.

It doesn’t help that North Sevier’s quarterback Taylor Crane is one of the top passers in 2A. He went 20-31 for 282 yards passing against the Bulldogs.

There was a point in the second quarter where the Bulldogs had scored two consecutive touchdowns and were behind by only one touchdown, 14-21. However, North Sevier ripped off five straight touchdown drives that the Bulldogs could not match.

Quarterback Caden Madsen led the Bulldogs with 61 yards passing and 42 yards rushing. Linebacker Brandon Tucker led the team in tackles with six unassisted and three assists.

This week, the Bulldogs host the South Sevier Rams on Friday Aug. 31, with kick-off scheduled at 7 p.m.