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By RICK SPRUNGER
The Bluffton Tigers dropped their sixth straight game Friday night, falling to the visiting Heritage Patriots by a 16-6 score.
The Tigers are now 1-6 on the season, including an 0-5 log in Allen County Athletic Conference play.
Heritage improved to 3-4, including a 2-3 conference slate.
The game was a battle between two virtually unyielding defenses.
Gone was the Bluffton team that had given up an average of 48 points per game in four previous conference starts.
Friday night, the Tigers allowed Heritage a mere 105 yards rushing, 228 yards in total offense, and two touchdowns, one of them coming after a Bluffton fumble at its own 14.
“Defensively, we played well,” said Bluffton coach Nick Nicholas after the game. “We had some third downs where we needed to get stops and didn’t. But overall, we played well on defense.”
Unfortunately, so did Heritage.
The Patriots limited the Tigers to just 48 yards rushing and 112 yards in total offense and were particularly strong in the second half when the game was on the line.
Bluffton moved the ball well on its first two offensive series, turning it over on downs after a nearly seven-minute drive the first time it touched the ball and capping its second drive with a 10-yard touchdown pass from Jarred Carpenter to Jace Hill.
But Heritage buckled its chinstraps a little tighter in the second half and stopped Bluffton’s running game in its tracks.
The Tigers managed just 25 yards in total offense in the entire second half, including a minus-11 yards rushing, while committing two turnovers.
Most of the yardage they did get came on one drive that eventually died at the Heritage 28.
Other than that, Bluffton never advanced the ball past the Heritage 49 and only got that far on a 10-yard pass play with less than three minutes left in the game.
“In the first half, we won the line of scrimmage,” said Nicholas. “The second half was more of a struggle on the line. I thought the running game was there, but we didn’t execute on some blocks.”
Still, Bluffton held a 6-3 halftime lead over a team it had not beaten in 15 years.
The three points that Heritage got were the result of a 30-yard field goal by Nathan Keen after a strong defensive stand by Bluffton.
Heritage had gotten a first down at the Tiger 13 but went nowhere after that, forcing the Patriots to send in the field goal unit.
Bluffton answered immediately with a 65-yard, 12-play drive that ended with Carpenter’s pass to Hill and that 6-3 Tiger lead.
The drive was aided considerably by a fourth-down pass interference penalty and featured a 19-yard pass from Carpenter to Matt Morrissey.
But the two-point conversion attempt failed. And Bluffton had a hard time generating any offense against the Heritage defense after that.
The Patriots took the lead for good early in the third quarter on a 43-yard touchdown pass from Nick Sheehan to Dan Gibson on a third-and-12 play after Gibson got behind the Bluffton defense.
That put Heritage in front, 9-6.
It was still anyone’s game at that point.
But when a critical Bluffton fumble was recovered by Heritage at the Tiger 14 midway through the third quarter, the Patriots made Bluffton pay in spades.
Reid Yoder’s four-yard touchdown run on fourth down with 3:19 to play in the period gave the Patriots breathing room at 16-6.
Heritage sustained one more drive in the fourth quarter before the Bluffton defense stiffened at the 6.
Keen missed a 23-yard field goal attempt at that point; but the Heritage defense made its 10-point lead stand up the rest of the way.
Bluffton will travel to Adams Central next week to face a Jet team that is an uncharacteristic 2-5 after last night’s 26-0 loss to Southern Wells.
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