JOHNSTOWN — “I wouldn’t want it any other way,” Bart Mayes said.
No, the Mountain View coach is more than OK with developing ulcers and losing hair.
He has to be — his Mountain Lions are in the new Class 3A Northern League and it’s going to be a struggle whether he likes it or not. And being ranked No. 1 doesn’t make it any easier.
On Friday night, Mountain View went through another emotion-filled game, one that went down to the final second. The Mountain Lions stopped Roosevelt quarterback Brandyn Hernandez at the 2-yard line to save a 21-14 road victory at Peterson Field in The Denver Post game of the week.
In moving to 6-0 overall, 1-0 in league, the Mountain Lions, atop The Denver Post/9News 3A poll, went from dominating to being on their heels and just a couple of yards from facing overtime.
“It was a playoff atmosphere,” Mayes said.
Mountain View led 7-0 at halftime, then nearly turned it into a rout late in the third quarter. Joey Hlushak capped his team’s first drive with a 4-yard touchdown run and made it 14-0 by catching a 28-yarder early in the third quarter.
Next was a wild sequence in which Mountain View defensive end Danny Netzel recovered a fumble and made a 68-yard return, only to have the ball punched out. No problem. Scott Gardner, following the play, recovered and returned it the final 5 yards for a 21-0 bulge.
Game over? Hardly.
“We knew they’d make a move,” Mayes said.
Mixing passing with their flexbone ground game, the No. 6 Roughriders (5-1, 0-1), started to strike. They scored consecutively off Mountain View fumbles as Hernandez went deep twice, first to Christopher Holle for a 66-yarder — the Mountain Lions’ Nick Black tipped it, but Holle still came up with it — then to Sam Hardy for a 41-yarder.
“Our kids kept fighting and they kept coming,” Roosevelt coach Ed Eastin said.
It almost worked. After the Roughriders’ defense held, Hernandez, who surprisingly threw for 258 yards, drove them from their own 13 with 4:49 to play to the Mountain View 40 with 31 seconds remaining. Hernandez hooked up with Marcus Holguin for a 23-yard completion, then rolled for a 12-yard gain inside 20 seconds.
But first-and-goal at the 4 yielded only a 1-yard gain and two spikes were used to stop the clock. A last-gasp effort by Hernandez, a roll left, gained only two more.
Black, who had a fourth-quarter interception, said, “Our teammates kept me up. Our defense was fantastic.”
Black, Netzel and Brandon Baeckel led the surge. Plus, Roosevelt lost an opportunity at the end of the first half, when a long completion to the Mountain View 6 came with only 0.5 of a second remaining, and assorted penalties, fumbles and mistakes kept the Roughriders chasing.
“We didn’t do the little things right,” Eastin said. “We had an opportunity to win it because we were going to go for 2 (if the Roughriders had tied it).”
Said Mayes: “What a league, it speaks a lot for what we have ahead of us.”
Neil H. Devlin: 303-954-1714 or ndevlin@denverpost.com
