COTTAGE GROVE, Ore. - After a difficult league opener against Junction City, Cottage Grove football (1-4, 0-1 league) returned to Don King Field for homecoming weekend against Philomath (3-2, 0-1 league). The Lions were looking to break a five-game losing streak in 4A league play, as well as get their first-ever win against the Warriors.
A gritty, powerful rushing attack allowed the Lions to keep themselves in the game and end the first half down 7-6. But that would be the only scoring Cottage Grove would do, as the Warriors scored 26 unanswered to finish the game 33-6, getting their first league win of the year.
“As I’m entering the locker room, I’m disappointed,” Cottage Grove head coach Stephen Turner said. “We played a hell of a first half… they’re a big play team and that’s what beat us was big plays.”
In the first quarter, a series of bruising runs from sophomore running back Jacob Palluck got the Lions all the way down to the Philomath 11, but senior receiver/defensive back Rocco De La Rosa got both hands on a tipped pass in the back of the end zone to secure a points-saving interception for the Warriors. The first score came later in the second quarter, as a high-arcing pass from AJ Altishin found a wide-open De La Rosa in the back corner of the end zone for a touchdown.
The Lions spent a majority of the game offensively in the option, looking to either run the ball up the middle or motion a back outside. In the second quarter, Palluck continued to find significant room to work at the line and found the end zone with a minute left in the half, but the extra point to tie the game up was hooked wide left.
The Lions opened the second half strong with a few more strong Palluck runs before an Andrew Horner fumble was recovered by Philomath. De La Rosa immediately made his presence felt with a catch over the middle before breaking three tackles on route to a 62-yard touchdown to increase Philomath’s lead. Kaden Howard would add to that lead with a 54-yard touchdown catch to further increase the Warriors’ control.
“It’s tough guarding (De La Rosa). I mean, how many touchdowns did he have tonight? You kinda want to try to keep the ball out of his hands, and we did a pretty good job of that in the first half, but in the second half, they made some adjustments,” Turner said.
De La Rosa finished with three receiving touchdowns on offense and an interception on defense.
After Howard’s touchdown to extend the Warrior lead to 15, the Lion offense seemed to lose a lot of its heart, and the rushing attack, which had been so potent in the first half, slowed to a crawl. The offense had no drives longer than 20 yards for the rest of the game.
“At halftime, they changed some things, and we changed some things, and we still had stuff, but some things that plague us all the time, y’know, fumbles and interceptions, that tend to happen when half your team is sophomores,” Turner said.
The Warriors return home to face Junction City (3-2, 1-0 league) on Friday, Oct. 17, while Cottage Grove looks to bounce back against Marist Catholic (1-4, 0-1 league) the same day.