Council Bluffs, IA

An instant classic.  It's a shame the term gets overused because if you weren't there to see #1 Hutchinson and #4 Iowa Western Saturday in Council Bluffs, there's no real way to convey just how good of a game the two teams played against each other.

The top-ranked Blue Dragons blocked a late Reivers' punt, returning it 40-yards for a late, go-ahead score to complete an undefeated regular season.

Iowa Western (8-2) scored first, rallied from a pair of three-point deficits, and looked poised to knock off Hutchinson (10-0) for much of the game, building their lead in the final quarter to as many as 11-points, but the Blue Dragons weren't to be denied.

Hutchinson's starting quarterback, Dylan Laible, took a backseat to the performance of teammate Dylan Kedzior.  The sophomore from Oklahoma racked up 212 all-purpose yards, 144 of it on a pair of long touchdowns that kept the game within reach for the visitors.

"They're an outstanding football team and so are we." Said Head Coach Scott Strohmeier after the final whistle, "I couldn't be prouder of the guys for coming out and executing today, we'd like to have a handful of plays back, but that's two really talented teams and hopefully, we'll get another chance against them."

Reivers' QB Aiden Niedens capped the opening seven-play, 74-yard drive with a 14-yard score.  Iowa Western didn't face a third down on the drive, racking up 54-yards of rushing against a Blue Dragons defense that had only been surrendering 73 yards a contest on the ground.

Hutch would knot the score just three plays later when Laible found Malik Benson for a 67-yard score on 3rd and five.

Tied at seven, Reivers fans would find out that Niedens was injured on the opening drive when James Graham took over at quarterback.  

Graham rushed four straight times on his opening drive and the team watched as his first passing attempt of the game fell incomplete forcing the Reivers to punt.

Hutchinson would move the chains on a 39-yard completion, but the 'Darkside' forced two tackles for loss and an incompletion by Laible and the Blue Dragons settled for a Cole Seagraves field goal to go up 10-7.

The lead wouldn't last long however as Jaden Koger exploded for a 90-yard kickoff return, the Reivers' first since 2017, to put Iowa Western back in front 14-10 with five and a half minutes still remaining in the opening quarter.

The defenses would bolster in the second, with the Reivers punting on a pair of drives and coming up empty on two others.  Sam Wilber's lone field goal attempt of the day hooked left and the Reivers failed to convert on a 4th & 2 to keep another drive going. 

Hutch wouldn't fair much better to start the quarter with Laible sacked twice and hitting only two of his first five passes on the first two possessions.  Kedzior also was tackled for loss on another pair of plays.

With just 1:16 remaining in the opening half and Iowa Western still up by four, the two 'Dylans' would flip the script.  Laible sent Kedzior in motion, finding the wide-open running back for a 76-yard touchdown to close out the half with Hutchinson up 17-14.

"We wanted to finish on the plus side of explosive plays," said Strohmeier, "and they got us three times in the first half, twice for scores.  That's the difference in the ballgame in the first half and that was the difference in the game."

Trailing by three, Iowa Western closed the 'explosive play' gap to one when Graham found LJ Fitzpatrick down the near sideline for a 61-yard touchdown strike.  Wilber's point-after pushed the lead to four with just under nine minutes remaining in the third.

The momentum continued in the home team's favor on Hutchinson's next drive as Laible threw just his third interception of the season when Kendrick Stone, Jr. picked off the sophomore inside the Reivers' 10-yard line.

The teams would enter the fourth, with #4 still leading #1, 21-17.

After exchanging punts, Graham led IWCC 51-yards in just six plays as Iowa Western used four different ball carriers to move down the field to add to the lead.  Trey King, Jr., Bryant Williams, and Graham all carried the ball before Koger capped off the drive's final two plays with a tough 14-yard gain before scoring untouched from four yards out to increase the lead to two scores. 

'Explosive plays' was the key phrase on the day for Hutchinson though.  Just two plays into HCC's next drive, it was Kedzior again, rumbling 70-yards to close the gap.  The Blue Dragons' two-point attempt was negated by the 'Darkside', but the lead had been cut back to one score with more than eight minutes remaining in the game.

IWCC would go three and out on their next drive, while Hutchinson picked up one first down before being forced to give it back to the Reivers with the clock winding down.  

The Reivers worked nearly two minutes off the clock before Ty Nissen came in to punt the ball back to Hutchinson from the IWCC 47-yard line.  Nissen has pinned opponents inside their own 20 on over 60% of his kicks this season and the Reivers were counting on the defense to close out the ballgame.  They never got the chance.  Hutchinson had gotten close to blocking Nissen's kicks on a couple of occasions in the game and Jermaine Hamilton-Jordan finally cashed in, blocking the final punt of the game and returning the kick for the late, go-ahead, score.  The conversion attempt was again denied by the Reivers, but tight end Jaimelle Claytor's scoop-and-score TD put the Blue Dragons up 29-28 with only 2:42 remaining in the game.

Graham and the Reiver offense seemed set on pulling off the comeback, converting a 4th and 11 on the catch of the year by Micah Davis.  Davis went horizontal to pull in Graham's pass one-handed to move the chains near midfield, but the drive would stall out short of giving Wilber a shot at the game-winning field goal.

Iowa Western held Hutchinson 13 points below their season average and 135 yards below their average offensive output, but all four of the Blue Dragons' touchdowns came on plays of greater than 40 yards, including nearly 70-yards a clip on their offensive scores.

The Reivers' 'Darkside' defense intercepted HCC quarterback Dylan Laible and sacked the QB four times on the day.  IWCC racked up another seven tackles for loss on the day, pushing their season total to 105 TFL on the year.  The team's sack total stands just three and a half shy of tying the all-time mark of 50.5, set in 2015. 

Individually Jackson Filer moved past 100 career tackles with his effort, joining Rashion Hodge as Reivers that have surpassed the plateau on the year.

Offensively Jaden Koger produced the first 100-yard single-game rusher of the season for Iowa Western and equalled Kedzior's 212 all-purpose yards.  Koger's 122 yards pushed him up and over the 500 and 600-yard marks in his career.  He becomes the 19th rusher in program history to clear 500-yards during their time in Council Bluffs.  The kickoff return was the first since the Reivers returned a kickoff for a score in three straight games in 2017.

For Iowa Western, it now becomes a waiting game to see what's next.  While the Reivers stumbled on Saturday, so did undefeated Northwest Mississippi and one-loss Trinity Valley and Georgia Military.  New Mexico Military, another two-loss team and last year's National Title winner, needed a blocked field goal to win their game against Navarro.  That victory sets up the SWJCFC title game this Saturday in Roswell against Kilgore, the squad that beat Trinity Valley. When the dust settled, Iowa Western found themselves up in the rankings, not down and there remains just one unbeaten in Hutchinson, and a host of others, including the Reivers, that feel their resume merits a playoff berth in this year's NJCAA field.  While the Reivers appear in as of now, this year becomes a perfect scenario to discuss expanding future years' playoffs to six or even eight teams to avoid what the voters will have to decide on and make firm in the coming week.  At the very least, Iowa Western will have a Graphic Edge Bowl to fall back on after winning the ICCAC title for the 12th time in 14 seasons, that would be little consolation after narrowly falling to Hutchinson and appearing at #3 this week.  The 2022 Graphic Edge Bowl is scheduled for Sunday, December 4th in Cedar Falls, the same weekend that the four-team NJCAA Playoffs are to start at the home sites of the number one and two seeds.

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