The Loper football team was held to 138 yards on offense by No. 4 Pittsburg State in a 20-10 loss Saturday afternoon. The offense was unable to sustain drives on Homecoming Day, punting the ball away nine times.
Coach Ryan Held called out the offense in his post-game press conference.
“It was not a good performance offensively,” Held said. “I think eight of our nine penalties were on offense and we were one for 11 on third down. It was amazing we were in the game against the fourth-ranked team in the county. The defense played well enough to win.”
The UNK offense had ten drives of five plays or less in the loss and averaged 1.42 yards per play, its lowest of the season.
“We were anemic on offense, just was not good,” Held said. “I can sit here and try to smoke and mirrors, this was not a good performance.”
The Lopers were down 10-0 early in the 2nd quarter when the defense forced a Pittsburg State punt after three plays. A 29-yard punt from the Gorillas gave the Lopers their best field position of the day at the Pittsburg State 48-yard line. UNK utilized a quick seven-play drive to score its only touchdown of the day on a 4-yard pass from Reagan Jones to Tuni Fufita. The drive was one of two possessions where the Lopers gained more than 18 yards.
“We just did not get yardage and credit to them, their defense played well,” Held said. “They got good coaches over there. I don’t think we’re far off, because if we were far off, that wouldn’t have been a 20-10 game.”
The Loper defense forced four punts and four field goal attempts. UNK would block the first field goal attempt on the first drive of the game. The other missed field goal went wide right.
“We lost by 10 to the 4th-ranked team in the country and we were in it the whole game,” Held said. “We just didn’t take advantage of our opportunities.”
After Jones got sacked in the 3rd quarter, the Lopers were out of field goal range and forced to punt the ball away. The punt from Marty Mormino would be muffed by the Gorillas and recovered by UNK at the Pittsburg State nine-yard line. However, the Lopers were unable to take full advantage and settled for a field goal to cut the deficit to three.
At the end of the 3rd quarter, Pittsburg State returned a punt to the UNK 25-yard line and the Gorillas needed just one play to reach the end zone to extend their lead to 20-10. From there, the Lopers had two more possessions and were forced to punt both times, allowing Pittsburg State to run down the clock and seal the win.
The football team is now 3-3 and will head on the road this weekend to take on 3-4 Missouri Western at 2 p.m. on Saturday.
