After leading by six at the end of the third quarter, Harrisburg allowed two touchdowns in the final period to fall 36-32 to Lewis & Clark Conference rival Salisbury on Friday. 

The game marked the first of three consecutive away games for the Bulldogs, who drop to 1-4 overall. The loss also casts doubt on their Lewis & Clark title defense.

This marks the final season for Harrisburg as a member of the L&C. The Bulldogs will form a new conference next year with Fayette and six other teams. Salisbury elected to remain a part of the dwindling Lewis & Clark.

Despite having a productive night on offense, Harrisburg coach Brennen Claas said the loss could be blamed on problems tackling and blocking, and the fact that his team was successful on just one of five two-point conversion attempts.

“We struggled to tackle. That was probably the breakpoint,” Claas said. “And if we would have converted all of our two-point conversions, we would have won the game.”

Salisbury took an early lead in the first quarter on a 23-yard touchdown run, but failed on the two-point conversion attempt. Harrisburg answered with the first of five touchdown passes on the night from quarterback Trace Combs. The junior play caller dropped a perfect pass into the waiting hands of Bryce Ott, tying the score at 6-6.

“Trace put it where only he could get it, and he made a great catch,” Claas said.

The Bulldogs took the lead heading into halftime after scoring twice more in the second quarter. The first came on a 15-yard touchdown pass to Hunter Cole to put the Bulldogs ahead 12-6. After Salisbury tied the game at 12-12 on a 25-yard scoring pass, Combs found Cole again from five yards out to go ahead 18-12 after two quarters.

Both teams scored on long plays in the third quarter. Salisbury struck first on a 40-yard touchdown run with a successful two-point conversion to go ahead by two. But Harrisburg answered with a 42-yard pass, again from Combs to Cole, and two-point conversion to regain the lead 26-20 with one quarter left to play.

That’s when Salisbury broke loose on two big running touchdowns in the fourth quarter to take a 10-point lead. The first came on a 47-yard play. Then, the Panthers scored on a 90-yard run play to go up by two scores.

Harrisburg found the endzone once more on a 25-yard pass from Combs to Cole, but it wasn’t enough. 

“We executed pretty well until the two-point plays,” Claas said. “Defensively, we just allowed big plays. We missed a lot of tackles. We were there most of the time. We just didn’t finish. We have to work on that in practice. We have to get better at that.”

The Harrisburg offense put up impressive numbers, despite losing the game. Combs completed 11 of 18 passes for 169 yards and all five touchdowns. 

Four of those scoring passes went into the hands of leading receiver Cole who made six grabs for 99 yards. 

“He had a good night. We did some different things with him. He made a couple of plays because of the athlete he is,” Claas said.

Junior Bryce Ott had one catch, an over-the-shoulder reception for a 26-yard touchdown.

Claas said that catch by Ott was key not just because of the touchdown, but because it drew the Salisbury defense away from Cole, who is a well-known receiver in the conference.

“Bryce Ott caught a great ball early that alleviated some of that attention on Hunter,” Claas explained.

And while the passing game scored all of the touchdowns, it was Harrisburg’s running game that moved the ball down the field. Sophomore Caleb Sager led the ground attack with 170 yards on 30 carries. He also caught three passes for 41 yards.

“We ran the ball really well and then took our shots when the opportunities presented themselves,” Claas said. “We did a lot of play-action because we were running the ball so well. It was just timing. Whatever they gave us, we took good advantage of.”

Senior Hayven Samuels also had a strong night on the ground, picking up 51 yards on eight carries. Combs ran four times for 23 yards.

But despite racking up 413 yards of total offense, the Bulldogs defense couldn’t contain the speedy Salisbury running game.

“They’ve got a really good offensive line,” Claas said. “They’re really big. And they have a sophomore running back who is one of the fastest kids in the conference on the football field. Once we missed one of those tackles or we took a bad angle, he made us pay.

“Defensively, it came down to tackling. We told the kids that blocking and tackling are the two most important things in football, two basic things we have to do. Blocking let us down on the two-point conversions, and tackling let us down on defense. That was the difference in the ball game.”

The loss means that the Lewis & Clark Conference title is now up for grabs. The Bulldogs won the conference a year ago. To repeat, they will not only need to win the their final three games of the season, but will need state-ranked Westran to lose at least one conference game. The 4-1 Hornets are ranked fifth in the state for the second week in a row for Class 1 and are 1-0 in the L&C. 

“I told our guys it’s no longer in our hands,” Claas said. “It was in our control as long as we kept winning conference games. Right now, we just have to move on and fix the things that we did not do well on Friday and improve on them for next week.”

Harrisburg will have the chance to play Westran in Huntsville on October 6.

In the meantime, Claas and the Bulldogs will prepare to face 4-1 Ash Grove. The game will be played at Versailles on Saturday due to the long distance between the two schools.

The Pirates won their last two games by way of shutouts, and boast a solid quarterback. 

“They’re very well-coached and very fundamentally sound. We’ll definitely have to negate our errors from Friday if we want to be successful. The focus this week will be fine-tuning and cleaning up a lot of our mental mistakes,” Claas said.

Saturday’s game will kick off at 6 p.m. at Versailles High School.