BELLINGHAM — The Neah Bay football team exorcised some serious demons Friday night. Actually, they were Blackhawks.
The Red Devils finally took care of their old tormentors in a Class 1B state quarterfinal, knocking off the Lummi Blackhawks 58-40 with a dramatic come-from-behind win at Civic Stadium in Bellingham.
The win puts Neah Bay (10-2 overall) in the 1B semifinals for the third straight year. The game will be at either the Tacoma Dome or east of the Cascades.
It also gives the team a measure of revenge, as it was the defending state champion Blackhawks (12-1) who eliminated Neah Bay from the 1B semifinals each of the past two years.
“This is just a payback,” said Red Devils coach Tony McCaulley, whose team lost to Lummi twice during the regular season.
“They did this exact same thing to us two years ago [when Neah Bay went into the semifinals undefeated and lost to the Blackhawks].
“They beat us in the semifinals instead of the quarters, but it was the same kind of thing. They beat us twice [this year], and then we beat them in the playoffs. It feels really good. We got the one that counted.”
The Red Devils pulled it off with a dominating run game that gashed Lummi for 467 yards on 46 carries.
Neah Bay senior Titus Pascua had one of his most productive games of the season, running for 240 yards and three touchdowns on 27 carries. He also ran in three two-point conversions.
Quarterback Josiah Greene added another 190 yards and four TDs on 13 carries, including an 88-yard scoring run in the first quarter that ignited a Red Devil rally after being down 20-0 early on.
“This is great, the whole team played hard,” McCaulley said.
“They fought until the end and never gave up after going down by 20 early. It was a total team effort.”
Neah Bay trailed the entire first half of the eight-man football game and went into the locker room down 26-16.
The Red Devils didn’t get their first lead until Pascua ran in his second touchdown of the night from 40 yards out in the third quarter.
The lead changed hands four more times, with Lummi scoring touchdowns in between Cody Cummins’ 13-yard scoring run early in the fourth.
But with the Red Devils’ run game eating up yardage, they exploded for three unanswered touchdowns to finish out the game.
That included runs of 9 and 29 yards from Josiah Greene and 85 yards from Pascua.
“Titus Pascua played one heck of a game,” McCaulley said. “It could have been his last game, and he played lights out.
“[Lineman] John Reamer had a heck of a night. We ran right over him all night, and Tyler McCaulley had a heck of a game at fullback, really blowing some holes open for Titus and Josiah.
“We wore them down. The conditioning paid off.”
Blackhawks quarterback Jared Tom finished with 160 yards passing and one touchdown on 14-of-24 passing with no interceptions before he was injured and missed the last part of the game.
Teammate Logan Toby completed 6 of 8 passes for 70. Tom also ran for another 137 yards and two scores on 18 carries.
Lummi had 475 yards of total offense but also saw three of five fumbles taken away by the Red Devils.
Zeke Greene also came up with a critical interception of Toby in the final frame.
Three of those turnovers came inside the Red Devil 20-yard line. Another Blackhawk drive ended inside the Red Devil 10.
“I told our guys coming in that mistakes like that were probably going to decide this game,” Lummi coach Jim Sandusky told the Bellingham Herald.
“In games like this, whoever wins the turnover battle is going to win the game, and they won the turnover battle today. We made too many costly mistakes.”
Lummi had beaten Neah Bay six times in a row prior to Friday’s game.
Among those wins were a pair of mercy-rule defeats at the Tacoma Dome in 2009 and ’10.
Now, it’s the Red Devils who will be moving on to the 1B semifinals once again.
They will take on Odessa-Harrington, which beat King’s Way Christian this weekend, next Saturday at a to-be-announced time and place.
“These are great games between these two teams,” Sandusky told the Herald.
“The guys play hard, and there is no bad blood between the schools. But for the 48 minutes on the clock, both teams give everything they’ve got.
“These games are a lot of fun, and they’re going to continue to be that way for the next couple of years.
“They return a lot next year — maybe not as much as us, but a lot.”
Neah Bay 58, Lummi 40
Neah Bay 8 8 14 28— 58
Lummi 20 6 6 8— 40
First Quarter
L—Tom 72 run (kick failed)
L—Tom 2 run (Brockie pass from Tom)
L—Cooper 70 fumble return (pass failed)
NB—J. Greene 88 run (Pascua run)
Second Quarter
NB—Pascua 12 run (Greene run)
L—Brockie 23 pass from Tom (pass failed)
Third Quarter
NB—J. Greene 74 run (Pascua run)
NB—Pascua 49 run (run failed)
L—Deardorff 9 pass from Tom (pass failed)
Fourth Quarter
NB—Cummins 13 run (Pascua run)
L—Brockie 26 pass from Toby (Cooper pass from Toby)
NB—J. Greene 9 run (run failed)
NB—J. Greene 29 run (Z. Greene pass from J. Greene)
NB—Pascua 85 run (run failed)
Individual Stats
Rushing—NB: Cummins 4-21, Pascua 27-240, J. Greene 13-190, McCaulley 2-16. L: Scott 8-60, Hoskins 8-28, Tom 18-137, Toby 1-2, Cooper 1-6.
Passing—NB: Dulik 1-4-0-17. L: Tom 14-24-0-160, Hoskins 1-1-0-12, Toby 6-8-1-70.
Receiving—NB: Z. Greene 1-17. L: Hoskins 2-2, Brockie 8-93, Cooper 4-53, Scott 2-30, Deardorff 5-64.
