The REAL Deal

Ubly's Jordan Kaufman makes a long run.
Ubly's Mitch Cleary

Ubly's John Walker makes the tackle.

Eric Booms attempts to make a catch on a two-point conversion attempt.

I have had the privelege of seeing Ubly twice this season alredy and there is only one word to describe them...impressive.

I caught the first half of Ubly's 57-0 route of Mayville (a privelege of being the "back-up" guy in sports this year), but what I did see was one of the most exciting offenses I have ever seen.

(I quaify that by saying that in 2005 "Big" Bubba Smith was still the head honcho of our sports department at the time, so I only saw two USA football games that season, one against Inkster and the loss in the finals to Traverse City St. Francis, so I don't have much means of comparison to that great team).

But back to the Bearcats, they scored 40 of their points in the first half and had they had another 5-6 seconds left on the clock they owuld have scored once more.

Ubly opened the game with a nice drive down the field, but Jordan Kaufman coughed one up in the red zone and Mayville got the ball back. The Bearcats held on defense and eventually scored on a 18 yard run from Kaufman with 5:54 left in the first to take a 6-0 lead.

On their next possession a 43 yard pass from Kaufman to Steven Weber set up a four yard TD run from Mitch Cleary with 1:38 to go in the quarter. After a successful two-point conversion, Ubly led 14-0.

With 11:37 left in the half, Kaufman and Cleary teamed up on a 55 yard TD strike to take a 20-0 lead.

Adam Glaza scored on a one yard TD run with 9:23 left to take a 26-0 edge.

Kaufman scored on a 29 yard TD run with 3:51 left and as Ubly left the field, Eric LaBuhn told his teammates they had time for two more scores.

They nearly did as Kaufman connected on a 12 yd Td strike to take a 40-0 lead with 2:34 remaining. They got the ball back with about 45 seconds left and drove down the field in a two minute offense. They did use a pir of timeouts, but never threw. On their final play, they made it to about the 12 yard line, which was just shy of a first down and the clock expired before they could spike the ball.

Four TD's at least for Kaufman brings his season total to at least nine, maybe more pending what happened in the final three scores in the game.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what this team can do aganst Harbor Beach next week, however, on paper the game is somewhat less appealing after the Pirate's 13-6 loss to Brown City last night.

Hopefully coach Troy Schelke can get his team to forget about that loss and move on, because Harbor Beach needs a split with Ubly and Deckerville and then needs to run the table in the remaining four games to make the playoffs.