Story by ELI BLANKINSHIP Photo by BLAINE KINDERKNECHT
Tiger Media Network
With plenty of rest and one goal in mind, Fort Hays State University football returned to the gridiron Saturday night at Lewis Field Stadium, hoping to snap a five-game losing streak to the Pittsburg State Gorillas. FHSU did that and more, coming away with a 42-17 statement victory.
“This is one step, [but] we’ve got eight more to go,” FHSU Head Coach Chris Brown said. “We [have] to take one step at a time. Enjoy it tonight, but when we come back to work on Monday, it’s on to the next one.”
Despite the one-sided scoreline, the contest certainly did not start in the Tigers’ favor. Pitt State scored 14 unanswered points to begin the first quarter. The Gorillas scored four plays into the game when Bobby Bacon connected with Jaydon Hill for a 49-yard touchdown. Less than 5 minutes later, Pitt State’s Paxton Wehner blocked a Tigers punt in the endzone, which was recovered by Jino Boyd to put Pitt State up 14-0.
“[It was a] very wild first half,” Brown said. “We had to wake up a little bit, knock the rust off a little bit, and get used to game speed again because you don’t get that much game speed in practice. So we had to get used to that. Pitt came in ready to fight; they were 0-3 and they wanted to get a win.”
FHSU’s offense took off behind the efforts of sophomore running back AG Floyd. The sophomore ran for 4 touchdowns and led all rushers with 145 yards on 24 carries, averaging 6 yards per carry.
“Going into the bye week, we had a really hard time losing to [CSU] Pueblo, but we just took that on the chin and we threw that tape away,” Floyd said. “We learned from it. We had time to grow from it, so I feel like having this bye week was really good for us. Pitt is a really great team. They’re a great team, great coaching staff. They’re great all over, so we came with it. We just realized it’s a great team, so we just brought it to them.”
FHSU quarterback Major Cantrell also had a standout performance, going 21-32 passing for 273 yards and 2 touchdowns. He also rushed for 46 yards on 8 carries. Cantrell’s top passing target was fifth-year wide receiver Ayden Robinson-Wayne, who had 5 receptions for 150 yards, 2 touchdowns, and the longest play from scrimmage in program history, a 97-yard touchdown reception.
“We’ve been waiting on that connection,” Brown said. “Aiden’s a tremendous player. Major’s a tremendous player as well….He was able to get the deep ball, which we’ve been looking for for a long time since I’ve been here. It seems like we never got those, and now we finally got it, so now that kind of makes it more of a threat for us offensively, which is going to help us establish the run game a little bit more, and then use our play action to go deep, but those two have really been working at it. You can see them watching film together, talking about different things and just getting on the same page.”
Defensively, the Tigers forced a season-high 5 turnovers, with 4 interceptions and 1 fumble recovery. Junior Mathew McBride led the charge with 2 interceptions and 1 breakup on the night.
“[It was] just the game plan [to] stay within the scheme,” McBride said. “Shout out to our defensive coordinator, Coach Harris, putting us in great positions to make plays, and you know it makes my job a lot easier [to] just go out there and do what I’m told.”
The Tigers improve to 2-1 on the season, and the Gorillas move to 0-4, their worst start since 1977. Fort Hays State takes to the road this week to play Missouri Western State at 7 p.m. on Saturday in St. Joseph, Missouri.