La Grande falls to Sweet Home

SWEET HOME — It was the same old story for the La Grande football team Friday night. The Tigers played well in the first half, but couldn’t keep up with Sweet Home in a 27-7 loss in the first round of the Class 4A State Playoffs.

“I think the kids played hard,”

La Grande head coach Matt Wolcott said. “We just couldn’t make plays when we needed to.”

Sweet Home capitalized on the turnover and scored to take a 7-0 lead. The Huskies tacked on one more score in the first half before the Tigers cut it to 14-7 at halftime.

In the second half, the La Grande defense loaded up the box and stopped the running game.

But Sweet Home’s quarterback was able to make a couple of plays in sloppy conditions to score two more times, while the Tigers offense couldn’t get anything going.

“We forced them to throw the ball a lot, but we couldn’t wrap up their guys and they were able to go down and score,” Wolcott said. “On offense we wore them down, but never had that big play to give us a spark.”

The Tigers finish the season with a record of 2-8, one more win than LHS had last season. La Grande will graduate 14 seniors from this year’s squad, but will have a host of juniors coming back next season.

Quarterback Carson Miller, running backs Andrew Humphreys, Walker Hudkins and Matt Nicholson, all return next year with plenty of experience to lead the Tigers in 2010.

In all, La Grande will have 21 juniors coming back for next season.

Stats were not available for this game.