Mountain Home shoves Sandpoint out of playoffs

SANDPOINT – When push came to shove, the Mountain Home High football team did just enough pushing and shoving atop the rain-saturated Barlow Stadium field Friday.

With the weather relegating play between the tackles for both teams, the visiting Tigers enjoyed the mud bath with a 10-7 win over Sandpoint in a 4A state playoff opener.

Mountain Home (9-1) advances to play at Hillcrest of Idaho Falls (9-1) on Friday in the semifinals. Hillcrest handled Pocatello 42-21 in Idaho Falls in other action.

Mountain Home learned a valuable lesson from an earlier lopsided loss to Nampa in a game played in similar conditions.

“We lost to Nampa pretty bad and it was in insane conditions like this,” Tigers coach Brian Floyd said. “We weren’t physical at all and we were getting pushed around. After that game we revamped everything we did. We’ve been working more and more on our running game since then. We knew we were going to have to play in these conditions again.”

The overhaul worked as the Tigers marched up and down the field, finishing with 318 yards on 52 attempts.

After the teams played to a scoreless tie at halftime, Mountain Home got its offense rolling on its second possession of the third quarter.

The Tigers served Sandpoint (4-6) a healthy dose of fullback Tallon Pauley. He had eight carries in the series for 76 yards before quarterback Kyle Kerfoot faked a dive to Pauley and ran 4 yards untouched on a bootleg for the game’s first touchdown with 3:14 to go in the quarter.

Pauley had 188 yards on 28 carries.

Moments later, the Tigers were in business again after linebacker Jake Lewis stole the ball from Sandpoint quarterback Jake Semones and returned it to the Bulldogs’ 5-yard line.

Sandpoint’s defense stiffened, limiting the Tigers to a 26-yard field goal from Chris Maholick with 11:55 to go in the game.

The Bulldogs responded, driving 59 yards on five plays – all carries from junior running back Ben Fisher, as Sandpoint pulled within 10-7. Fisher capped it with a 25-yard TD scamper with 10:20 to go.

Sandpoint appeared to seize the momentum from the Tigers 4 minutes later when they failed to convert on a fake punt that gave the Bulldogs the ball at Mountain Home’s 39.

Semones kept the ball on Sandpoint’s first play, getting within inches of a first down. Trying to catch the Tigers off guard on second-and-short, Semones’ threw a wobbly, underthrown pass and the Tigers’ Pauley intercepted with 6:29 remaining.

That essentially clinched the win, even though Sandpoint got the ball back one more time at its 19 with 2:17 left. The Tigers’ Ricky Lee intercepted a desperation pass with 38 seconds showing on the clock.

Fisher accounted for 212 of Sandpoint’s 231 yards total offense.

Sandpoint coach Mike Mitchell said he wished he could have the first interception back. He said he was planning on featuring more Fisher thereafter had his team not turned over the ball.

“I’m just disappointed,” Mitchell said. “It was one of those ballgames where nobody could blink, and we kind of blinked. They played hard all night and our kids played hard all night.”