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Ice Broken: Wranglers suffer first loss of season at Colorado
BY Matt Welch, mwelch@starlocalnews.com
After two games of answering the call and rallying for victories, there was no timely surge to be made by the Allen Wranglers on Sunday afternoon.
Enduring the third leg of a four-game road trip, the Wranglers were dashed by untimely miscues that the Colorado Ice feasted on for a 61-55 victory.
“We just didn’t have good efforts on special teams and turned the ball over too much,” said Patrick Pimmel, Allen head coach. “We were never able to get that lead and finish the game.”
The takeaway was one of three turnovers forced by the Ice, while Allen had just one takeaway – a Mike Phillips interception of David Knighton late in the third quarter.
“I think the turnovers were a lot of it,” Pimmel said. “We also took some bad offsides penalties at crucial times.”
With initial signs entering Sunday’s contest pointing to Owens not playing, the Ice weren’t caught off guard by the former NFL receiver’s appearance. They limited Owens to five catches for 32 yards and a touchdown, which was scored with 31 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
“I think a lot of that was just good coaching on Colorado’s end,” Pimmel said. “Our quarterback, Ben Sankey, doesn’t run so they didn’t have to worry about that and they were just able to drop everybody back into pass coverage.”
Despite Colorado bottling up Owens, the Wranglers offense still amassed a season-high 301 yards. Sankey’s lack of mobility didn’t deter his prowess through the air, with the signal caller slinging 243 yards and five touchdowns on 35-of-39 passing.
“Sankey’s been playing well, but sometimes it’s hard to rely on a quarterback with no mobility,” Pimmel said, “so we’ve got to find a way to address that situation.”
Darius Fudge led the Wranglers with 67 yards on six catches, plus 56 rushing yards and two scores – the first of which was an 11-yard scamper for the team’s first touchdown after falling behind, 16-3, in the first quarter. Maurice Avery posted six catches for 66 yards and two scores, including a 4-yard touchdown grab with 2:18 left in the third. A 10-yard field goal by David Pino followed to bring Allen within 44-41 with 13:07 left in the fourth quarter.
The Ice didn’t budge, ripping off 10 unanswered points.
Duane Brooks was one of three Colorado players to score on the ground, with Tobias Robinson adding a pair of rushing scores on 27 yards. Knighton kept Allen off balance with 148 passing yards and two touchdowns on 13-of-20 attempts against a Wranglers defense that had surrendered just 28.3 points per game entering Sunday’s contest.
“We didn’t play a great defensive game,” Pimmel said, “but I still felt like the defense played well enough to win if we would have not committed those penalties and had some help on special teams.”
The setback dipped Allen to 2-1 on the season, with a 7:05 p.m. matchup against the Wichita Wild set for Saturday. The two teams last clashed Feb. 25 in each squad’s season opener, with Allen claiming a 50-30 victory.
“We’ve got to get better in all three phases of the game,” Pimmel said. “Hopefully we put out a better effort this week and one that leads to a win. It’d really be nice coming home with just one loss instead of two.”
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