Sports

Panthers sideswipe DCB

By Staff reports

12/09/2014

CEDAR FALLS, Iowa - Before this year’s Graphic Edge Bowl, Ellsworth Community College (Iowa) had a struggling football team. The Panthers often couldn’t seem to buy a win in 2014 and finished the regular season with a 3-7 record.

Not that anyone would’ve been able to tell on Sunday.

Dakota College at Bottineau (DCB) went into the first game of the two-game Graphic Edge Bowl on Sunday with an 8-3 record and hopes of a first bowl win in program history. The Panthers had other ideas, however, and downed DCB 39-7.

The first half of the game at the UNI-Dome, the home of the University of Northern Iowa’s football team, was a tight affair. The Panthers struggled against a DCB defense that has been superb all season, and Ellsworth only went into halftime with a 13-7 lead.

The game remained close until near the end of the third quarter. It was then that Ellsworth - the game’s de facto home team, with the school’s Iowa Falls campus a mere 50-minute drive away - created separation between itself and the Lumberjacks.

Panthers kicker Dayton Balvanz opened his team’s second-half barrage with a field goal in the dying moments of the third quarter. He then hit another at the start of the game’s final frame.

Ellsworth quarterback Demarius Davis took over from there. With 8:30 left to play, he found Panthers wide receiver Tyrian Taylor on a 38-yard touchdown connection.

Just 72 seconds later, the pair of Panthers linked up once again on an 18-yard touchdown pass that helped Ellsworth go ahead 33-7.
Panthers running back Duntin Caldwell later found the DCB end zone from four yards out to round out the scoring.

DCB’s only major offensive success on Sunday came early in the game. The Jacks tied the game at 7-7 when quarterback Krae Kelso found wide receiver Dontrael Brown on an 88-yard pass for a score.

Apart from that one big play, though, DCB’s offense accomplished little on Sunday. The Jacks finished the game with 181 total yards, which pales in comparison to the 500 Ellsworth racked up.

DCB head coach Tim Pfeifer came away disappointed with his team’s performance. Despite the Jacks having not played a game in over a month, he was looking for more than he got on Sunday.

“I was a little disappointed because I thought we’d play better than we did,” Pfeifer said. “We’d had a long layoff, though, and had nothing but practice for a while, and I don’t know if that helped or hurt us. Either way, we didn’t play how I would’ve liked us to.

“I thought we looked all right for the first half of the game, and really the first three quarters of the game, but then we had a couple of turnovers that hurt, and Ellsworth got a few touchdowns near the end there that bumped the score up. 

“I didn’t think we looked as bad as the score says, but that’s the way the game went,” Pfeifer continued. “For the first three quarters, we played a good football game, but on offense we couldn’t get anything going and (Ellsworth) did.”

Once the Panthers’ offense got going, not much got in its way. Davis was lethal for Ellsworth under center, as he threw for 357 yards and three touchdowns on the day.

Taylor also had a big day for the Panthers. He was responsible for 111 of Ellsworth’s passing yards as well as two of his team’s touchdowns against DCB.

Davis was later named the game’s most valuable offensive player. Ellsworth defensive end Zach Depriest won the defensive MVP award after recording six tackles, two sacks and one forced fumble.

Ellsworth, a scholarship program that plays in the highly-competitive Iowa Community College Athletic Conference (ICCAC), finished its season with a deceptive 4-7 record.

DCB finished its first season as a member of the Minnesota College Athletic Conference (MCAC) with an 8-4 record. The Jacks are now 0-2 in bowl games in program history. Pfeifer feels that winning one is the next step in his program’s development.

“I feel like we were pretty successful this year,” he said. “We finished 8-3 and only had three losses and one of them could’ve gone either way, but I’m pretty happy with the program right now and feel like we’re going in the right direction. 

“As for today, it’s always fun to play in a bowl game, but we’ve got to get to the point where we’re playing better in one of these.”