The Crawfordsville comeback came up one possession short in a 44-36 Monon Conference football game Friday.
The Athenians trailed by as many as 24 points early in the third quarter, but got the game back to one score three different times late in the third and into the fourth quarters.
Back-to-back turnovers by the Tiger Cubs led to 16 C’ville points, both touchdown passes from Braeden Schlote to Landon Gerold, and it was 30-22 heading into the fourth quarter.
An Ayden Sempsrott 8-yard scamper got it to 37-29, and the last score of the game came on a Schlote 4-yard run that got it to 44-36.
An onside kick that was inches from being recovered with 13.9 seconds left sealed the deal, as the Athenians fall to 2-6 overall and 0-6 in the conference while the Tiger Cubs move to 3-5 overall and l 3-3 in the Monon.
In between all of that was a lot of offense generated by both quarterbacks.
Schlote finished with 317 pass yards on a 28-of-32 night. He had a streak of 15-straight in the second half. He found Gerold for three touchdowns and completed 13 passes to Johnovan Smith for 118 yards.
Greencastle QB Cole Stephens was all as advertised, as the senior threw for three scores and ran for three more. He evaded pressure and found open receivers all game, as he finished with 239 pass yards and 198 on the ground.
The senior now has 11,567 career pass yards, which is third in state history, 628 yards behind all-time leader Jake Schiff of Evansville Mater Dei, who played from 1998-2001.
He kept his team that one score in front of the home team. Chunk plays were a big part of that, as the Tiger Cubs had 19 plays of 10 yards or more. They finished with 442 yards, and the Athenians had 344.
“I am so proud of these guys and their efforts, especially in the second half,” Athenians coach Brad Clark said. “It’s not the result we wanted, and we took too long to get started, but we made some adjustments and tweaked some things in the second half. We got those turnovers and we got a lot better flow. Schlote is such a tough kid and a heck of a football player. He makes good decisions. Landon is such a weapon, both on offense and defense. He makes things happen, and Smith is just a tremendous go-to guy, someone we know we need to get the ball to and let him make things happen. All of these guys are representatives of the great group of young men we have on this team. They work so hard, and they come to practice ready to make the program better.”
Both teams finish the regular season next week, and sectional draws will be announced Sunday night.
The Tiger Cubs finish at home against Southmont and the Athenians travel to Frankfort for their regular-season finale.
