Ironton falls victim to 3 key plays by Ashland
Published 9:02 pm Sunday, September 18, 2016
Jim Walker
jim.walker@irontontribune.com
Do as I say. No, that’s it. Do as I say.
That’s not what they did.
Ironton Fighting Tigers’ coach Mark Vass told his young team what they needed to do in order to beat the Ashland Tomcats Friday night at Tanks Memorial Stadium.
But Ironton did not heed the words of wisdom and was guilty of three big plays in a 27-3 loss.
“I talked to them before the game about the three facets we had to do: blocking, tackling and taking care of the football. And I don’t think technically we did all three of those throughout the game,” said Vass.
Ironton gave up two long touchdown passes and fumbled during a drive that resulted in an Ashland scoop and score.
The Fighting Tigers lost two fumbles and both proved costly.
“Turnovers were big. We can’t turn it over. We were moving the ball pretty well at times and we’d have a turnover or make a mistake. And (Ashland) played pretty clean ball. They didn’t make the mistakes or have the turnovers that we did,” said Vass.
“The two big pass plays hurt us. We didn’t get the job done. (Tate) Dowdy has good speed and just got behind our corner.”
Ironton forced a three-and-out to start the game and then went on 15-play drive from its own 28 to the Tomcats 5-yard line.
The Fighting Tigers fumbled but did recover. However, it costs them three yards and led to a 22-yard field goal by Tre Neal with 2:44 left in the quarter.
Ashland (2-2) then went on a six-play, 73-yard scoring drive that ended abruptly.
On fourth-and-5 at the Ironton 49, the Fighting Tigers allowed Dowdy to get behind the secondary and Braxton Ratliff hit him in stride on a 49-yard touchdown pass. Blaine Collins’ conversion kick gave the Tomcats a 7-3 lead on the first play of the second quarter.
Ironton drove to the Ashland 38 but fumbled and the Tomcats recovered at the 45.
It took the Tomcats 10 plays to score with the help of some scrambling under pressure by Ratliff to complete a key 13-yard pass on fourth down to Marcus Lazear for a first down at the Ironton 18.
Kurtlen Brown scored two plays later on an 11-yard run and it was 14-3 with three minutes left in the half.
Each team had two possessions to start the third quarter that stalled. Ironton then had the ball at the 36 and used two plays to reach the 48. Andrew Scott ran for 8 yards to the Ashland 46 but lost the ball fighting for extra yardage and Noah Roberts picked up the ball and ran down the sidelines 56 yards for a touchdown.
Collins kicked the conversion for a 21-3 lead with 1:20 on the clock.
Ironton was forced to punt and the ball rolled dead at the 9-yard line. But on the ensuring play Ratliff hit a streaking Dowdy running down the sidelines for a 91-yard scoring pass with 10:09 to go.
Ironton had 172 total yards with 145 on the ground. Tanner Wilson ran 13 times for 83 yards for Ironton.
Ashland had 283 yards with 96 on the ground. Ratliff was 7-of-10 for 187 yards and Dowdy had four catches for 148 yards and the two TDs.
Ironton (1-3) must regroup as they finish the season with Ohio Valley Conference play including South Point at home next Friday.
“We’ve still got a long way to go. We have league play. We want to win the league and make the playoffs. I still think we can do both. We just have to get better in every facet of the game,” said Vass.
“We have to tackle better. We have to wrap up. We were in position to make plays on the defensive side and we didn’t. On offense when we did move the ball we had turnovers and it cost us the game.”