Laguna Hills holds on against Northwood

IRVINE -Northwood did everything it could Friday night to pull off an upset over Laguna Hills in a nonleague game at Irvine.

But Laguna Hills made the big plays when it had to and held on for a 28-25 victory over the Timberwolves.

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"It's tough for anybody to lose that one," Laguna Hills coach Bruce Ingalls said. "We battled back, they battled back, we battled back and they battled back. It was going back and forth.

"There were two teams that desperately wanted to win their second game."

It was agreed that the two teams would not play overtime in the event of a tie.

But Northwood (1-1) came close to getting a shot at a tie in the final seconds.

The Timberwolves made a defensive stop with 18 seconds left and got the ball on their own 38-yard line.

A pass interference call moved the ball near midfield.

With 14 seconds left, quarterback Ricky Bautista connected with Tyler Zorn on a 19-yard pass play which moved the ball to the Laguna Hills 29.

Northwood had no timeouts left so Bautista tried to race up to the line and spike the ball to kill the clock and set up a field-goal try, but time ran out.

"We struggled in the third quarter and early in the fourth," Northwood coach Rick Curtis. "They have a great program and they've been to the finals and last year to the semis and they kind of took care of the Pacific Coast League so we knew we were in for a battle.

"But it was a good game, that's why we schedule these games — to make us better — and I'm proud of how hard our kids played. We made some mistakes; we had some penalties that hurt us, and a couple special teams things hurt us, but we battled back."

Northwood cut the lead to 28-25 when Bautista connected with Alex King on a 9-yard TD pass with 1:50 left. The Timberwolves added a two-point conversion when Bautista hit Tyler Perkins.

Tommy Vorsheck provided the cushion that Laguna Hills (2-0) needed with a 1-yard TD run in the third quarter and a 2-yard TD run early in the fourth quarter.

Alex Salera led Laguna Hills with 86 yards rushing on 14 carries, and Ryan Ur hauled in four catches for 101 yards and a TD.

It was looking promising for Northwood in the first half. Bautista connected with Perkins on a 6-yard TD pass with 6:36 left in the second quarter to give the Timberwolves a 17-14 advantage.