Good Knight: Tigers stop BK's streak at 10

Going into Friday night's game at Bishop Kelly, the Mountain Home Tigers had lost 10 straight times to the Knights of Bishop Kelly in football.

For about 31 minutes it was anybody's ball game, but the Mountain Home Tigers dominated the last 17 minutes of the game to beat the Knights 49-21 and end the streak at 10.

Neither team was able to generate much offense in the first quarter.

Mountain Home recovered a fumble at the 50 but ended up losing yardage back to the 28 and punted it back to the Knights.

Bishop Kelly recovered a Tiger fumble on the Mountain Home 44-yard line, and helped out by a 42-yard pass play that put the Knights on the Tiger seven, scored on a seven-yard run by Justice Mariscal. With Chris Home's PAT, the Knights led 7-0 with 3:32 left in the first quarter.

Mountain Home's first score came on a 97-yard drive that started in the first quarter and ended on the 11th play of the drive on a 30-yard pass from Kyle Kerfoot to Jesse Donez for a touchdown. Chris Maholick booted the PAT to tie the game at 7-7 with 8:25 left to go in the first half.

Another long pass -- this one for 51 yards -- helped set up the Knights' next score, Justice Mariscal taking it in from two yards out. Chris Home's PAT made it 14-7 Knights with just 1:25 left in the half.

Jesse Donez ran the Bishop Kelly kickoff 78 yards back to the Knight's four-yard line. As the clock ran out on the first half, Kyle Kerfoot passed four yards to Daniel Katsules for the score. Chris Maholick tied the game at 14-14 with his PAT as the teams headed into the locker room at halftime.

A good kickoff return to the Mountain Home 39-yard line set the Knights up in great field position to start the second half, but five plays later, Mike Heinen picked off a Jake Wylie pass for the Tigers at the Mountain Home 18.

Bishop Kelly returned the favor as Dom Chumich picked off a Kyle Kerfoot pass at the Tiger 40.

The Tiger defense held and Jake Wylie's 10-yard punt set Mountain Home up on their own 25. Mountain Home then mounted a 75-yard 11-play drive that actually saw them penalized 30 yards on the drive, but still ended with a score, Kyle Kerfoot passing to Jesse Donez for a 12-yard touchdown. With Chris Maholick's PAT Mountain Home led for the first time on the night, 21-14 with 1:23 left in the third quarter -- the drive consuming almost half the quarter.

"I think that long drive broke their backs," said Tiger football coach Brian Floyd.

"We were just picking them apart. We didn't think they could handle our speed, and we were trying to spread things out. We were kind of testing them out in the first half to see where we wanted to go, and then once we found it, we'd just take the five-yard outs and five-yard hitches, and they just couldn't cover that, so we did that long drive, even though we had all those penalties, and just kept it going, and that's impressive to me."

Bishop Kelly managed a first down on their next possession before having to punt the ball back to the Tigers.

Mountain Home started their next possession on their own 28-yard line. Jesse Donez took the handoff from Kyle Kerfoot and cut the corner around the left end and turned on the afterburners for a 72-yard touchdown run. The PAT was blocked, but Mountain Home had increased its lead to 27-14.

The Knights then went three and out and punted the ball back to Mountain Home.

With the ball at the Mountain Home 45-yard line, Tallon Pauley took the handoff and burst through for a 55-yard touchdown run. Chris Maholick's PAT made it 34-14 Tigers with 8:16 left in the game.

Bishop Kelly managed to score on their next possession, helped out by a pass interference call. Jake Wylie passed 45-yard to Collin Clovis for the score. Chris Home's PAT made it 34-21 Tigers with 7:27 left.

Mountain Home managed to pick up a couple first downs and take some time off the clock in their next possession before punting the ball back to the Knights.

Bishop Kelly was unable to pick up a first down, and when their fourth down pass did not pick up a first down, the Tigers took over on downs at the Knights 25-yard line.

Two plays later, Jesse Donez scored again, this time from 26 yards out, as the Tigers increased their lead to 40-21 with 57 seconds left.

Bishop Kelly managed to complete two passes before time ran out.

"It's about time!" said Coach Floyd. "I don't know if it was really so much of a -- everybody says, 'Oh, you've got the monkey off your back!' -- it really wasn't that. In my opinion we should have beat them the last three times we played them.

"We've got kids that really want to go after it, and these kids this year, they pretty much do exactly what you say, so it's been a fun year so far."

The Tigers rushed the ball for 232 yards, with Tallon Pauley and Jesse Donez both going over 100 yards in rushing. Pauley had 119 yards and a score on 17 rushes, Donez had seven touches for 104 yards and two scores. Kyle Kerfoot rushed six times for 42 yards.

Kerfoot completed 17 of 26 passes for 198 yards and three touchdowns. He had one pass picked off.

Jesse Donez caught four passes for 77 yards and two scores. Tommy Miller caught four passes for 33 yards, Ricky Lee had three catches for 39 yards, Tallon Pauley had three catches for 35 yards, Stefan White had two for four and Daniel Katsules caught one for four yards and a score.

Defensively, Billy Derome came up big again, leading the Tigers with 19 tackles. Jake Lewis, Jesse Sloderbeck and Tom Hennessey each had 8.5 tackles. Sloderbeck forced a fumble. Ricky Lee and Tommy Miller both had five tackles, Jacob Viola three. Chris Maholick and Ethan Standlee both recovered fumbles and Mike Heinen picked off a pass.

The win improved the Tigers to 5-0 on the season, and 3-0 in conference play.

They have a big showdown at Nampa Friday night against the Bulldogs, who are 2-1 in conference play.

"They're a very tough team," said Coach Floyd of the Bulldogs. "I was thinking (going into the season) that both of us would be 5-0 going into this game, but they did lose Quaid (Morris) for a while, but he's back, and this is what we've been waiting for. We've got tough games past this one as well, but we know what we need to do against Nampa, and these kids know what they need to do.

"They were very focused after the game. You'd think they'd be celebrating the win over BK, but we turned the page and are already focused on Nampa."

Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. Friday night at Bulldog Bowl in Nampa.