This story has been updated to note the upcoming game against West Anchorage has been rescheduled at 3 p.m. Saturday instead of Friday evening.
No one Juneau player made one huge game-breaking play, but a lot of Huskies made a lot of key plays en route to a 17-6 road trip victory over California’s Bishop Union High School on Friday night.
Caleb Ziegenfuss and Noah Ault took turns providing different kinds of field leadership at quarterback. Running backs Samuel Sarof and Ethan Van Kirk took turns smashing through holes in the middle of the field opened by the offensive line to keep prolonged drives going.
On defense, Hayden Aube was a monster playmaker at linebacker with a fourth-down strip sack and another sack later with less than a minute remaining that ended any realistic hope of a Bishop comeback.
The Huskies (2-2 overall, 1-2 in the Cook Inlet Conference) arrived in Bishop, California, with a ”caveman football” game plan that called for a lot of runs up the center of the field by Ziegenfuss, Sarof and Van Kirk, Head Coach Rich Sjoroos said.
“I said ‘Guys, I just really believe that you are a grittier, tougher group as a whole,’” he said. “They have some kids I think that are going to embrace that style of football, but I don’t know that they’re going to have 11 guys that will embrace that style for three hours.”
With Bishop’s defense shadowing senior wide receiver Jayden Johnson, who has been the Huskies’ primary playmaker much of the past two seasons, the offensive game plan was to put the ball in other players’ hands, Sjoroos said.
“The plan was just to keep hammering in there, hammering in there, and then pick a time to take a couple shots down the field. We weren’t able to connect on those, but at the same time it kept them honest and served its purpose, and we were able to get enough points on the board.”
Meanwhile, “defensively we just played lights out,” Sjoroos said. Bishop’s deep passing game, which has had success this year, was largely kept under control by making defensive backfield adjustments that included playing Ziegenfuss at safety rather than linebacker and moving Sage Schultz to cornerback which “seemed to flow a lot better.” Aube, roaming the middle at linebacker, stuffed plays for short gains or losses throughout the game in addition to his pressure on the opposing quarterback.
“He got to be up there for defensive player of the year,” Sjoroos said.” I mean, he’s just got so many tackles on the ground that he covers.”
The hometown Broncos had plenty of opportunities and occasional big plays that could have altered the outcome. But key mistakes by Bishop meant the Huskies got all the points they needed for victory on their first offensive possession.
Bishop, after receiving the opening kickoff, went nowhere on their opening drive after being set back by an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Juneau flirted with early disaster when a short punt was fumbled by an upback, but senior wide receiver Jayden Johnson recovered at the Huskies’ 28-yard line.
Juneau appeared it would similarly go nowhere on its first drive with two runs up the middle stuffed and a long pass falling incomplete. But a high snap to the punter that delayed his kick resulted in a roughing the kicker penalty and a Huskies first down.
The result was a lengthy drive by Juneau that stretched into the first play of the second quarter, aided by two more crucial Bishop penalties resulting in first downs for the Huskies. One was an encroachment on a fourth-and-1 at the Bishop 46, the other for roughing the passer to bail Juneau out of a first-and-30 caused by consecutive holding penalties by the Huskies.
That put Juneau on the Bishop 15-yard line and, after a quick out pass to Van Kirk for seven yards, two runs by Sarof put the Huskies in the end zone with a 7-0 lead with 11:56 left in the second quarter.
The roughing the passer penalty occurred as Ault entered the game for the first time since being injured two weeks ago, in the hope his superior passing skills could get the Huskies out of a hole. He would return intermittently at other points during the game when Sjoroos was looking to open up the offense with longer throws to Johnson and other receivers.
“One of the strategies was just if we take all these shots down the field and we don’t connect on them, that’s one less run play that we have to get a first down,” Sjoroos said.
Bishop responded with its own scoring drive after returning the ensuing kickoff into Juneau territory, with a long pass to the Huskies’ 20-yard-line the big play before the Broncos smashed it across the goal line on a fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line. A botched snap on the conversion attempt left Juneau in the lead 7-6.
The Huskies, starting on their 20 after the kickoff, marched down the field on another long drive sparked by a 39-yard off-tackle run by Van Kirk through a huge hole created by the offensive line. That put Juneau on the Bishop 40-yard line and the Huskies with a methodical series of runs — including an eight-yard gain by Van Kirk to convert a fourth-and-five — ended with Sarof scoring on a one-yard run to make the score 14-6 with 1:33 left in the first half.
Bishop would quickly get to midfield on two pass completions, but a penalty on the Broncos and two badly overthrown deep passes ended their attempt to score again before halftime.
Juneau punted after stalling on its opening second-half drive. Bishop then essentially returned the favor when, facing a fourth-and-long near midfield, a long pass thrown downfield was intercepted by Juneau’s Daniel Campbell at the Huskies’ 11-yard line.
But Juneau again went nowhere and, after a punt to Bishop at its 16-yard line, the Broncos mounted what appeared to be a serious threat to close the gap as on the first play a long pass and after-catch run put the ball on the Juneau 26-yard line. But a couple of plays later a Broncos’ fumble on a running play was recovered by Ziegenfuss.
Yet another Juneau punt on its next possession led to yet another Bishop drive into Huskies territory that was stopped by a turnover when Aube, on a fourth-and-6, stripped the ball from the opposing quarterback on a sack and gave Juneau the ball on its own 26-yard line.
That led to the Huskies’ final — and prolonged — scoring drive as they moved down the field to the Broncos’s 11-yard line entirely on running plays. Facing a fourth-and-4 with less than three minutes to go, Sjoroos called upon one of the newest members of the team — Sammy Mazon, playing his first-ever game after joining the Huskies in recent weeks — to kick a field goal that put them up 17-6 with 2:43 remaining.
“These kids have been out trying to kind of recruit some players, just so we get some more kids out,” Sjoroos said, noting he was fielding a small roster of players when the season began three weeks ago. “I think we’re up to 51 kids now on the team. And that’s great. It helps our practices go better. It gives us more depth. And it’s just more fun having more kids out there. These are some younger kids that are coming out and hopefully we’ll keep them in the program and get them all the way through their senior year.”
Bishop got one last chance and, backed up on its own 11-yard line, hit a long pass to its 44-yard line and then a short completion to midfield with 1:41 left. But an incompletion and an intentional grounding penalty led to a third-and-20, with Aube then sacking the quarterback for about a 10-yard loss which led to a final desperation fourth-down throw by Bishop that was knocked down by the Huskies with 37 seconds left.
Ault came in and ended the game with a kneeldown.
The Huskies’ next game is scheduled at home at 3 p.m. Saturday at Adair-Kennedy Memorial Park against West Anchorage High School. While West Anchorage was 2-1 entering Saturday’s game against Dimond High School, it is considered one of the state’s top teams and Sjoroos said “next week the game plan’s probably flipped around totally different.”
”We’re going to need Jayden and Noah to have big games against West,” he said. “You can’t do that (caveman) style against those guys. It just makes them mad.”
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
