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September 10, 2005Frankfort thwarts Suttons BayPanthers hold off Norsemen for key 21-20 victoryByRecord-Eagle staff writer FRANKFORT - One play seems to make a big difference when these two teams get together. Frankfort, which handed Suttons Bay its only regular-season loss last season on a fake punt, gave the Norse their first loss of 2005 on Friday, 21-20, in the Northwest Conference football opener for both teams. The host Panthers (2-1) narrowly thwarted a two-point conversion with 3:43 left in the game to preserve the win. Todd Mikowski scored on a 1-yard plunge for Suttons Bay (2-1) to pull the Norse, who dominated the second half, to within a point. Suttons Bay called a timeout to set up the conversion play for the win. LaKota Raphael came up just short on a run off the left side. "They couldn't stop us," Suttons Bay coach Joe Trudeau said of the decision to go for two and the win. "They hadn't stopped us all night. We dominated the line of scrimmage and we were more physical than they were. "The guys on the line said he was in, the refs said he wasn't. It's tough when you feel like you outplay a team and you lose. Those are the ones that hurt the most." "They say it's a game of inches and there it was," Frankfort coach Matt Stapleton said. The Panthers ran just 17 plays in the second half - two of which were punts. But the 21-7 advantage Frankfort built in the first half on the strength of its passing game was enough. "I give our kids a lot of credit, they hung in there," Stapleton said. "They were running right over us in the second half. We were fortunate that we made a couple of plays in the first half and held on from there." Suttons Bay set the tone for the second half on the first possession after the intermission. The Norse drove 52 yards in nine plays to cut the gap to 21-14. The first eight plays of the drive were runs before Jeff Ruthkowski hit Adam Konieczka with an 18-yard scoring pass and Cale Forton booted the extra point. The Norse added another touchdown on its first possession of the fourth quarter. The drive started with an incomplete pass followed by 12 straight runs, capped by Mikowski's plunge. Frankfort knew a run was going to come on the conversion and were just able to stop it. "I was ready to call a timeout if he didn't," Stapleton said. "We knew it was going to be some kind of lead play. I was anticipating they would go to the right side because they were gashing us all night over there. "That's a heckuva a football team they have. They have a couple of the best players we've seen in a couple of years. That's a team that's going to win a lot of football games." But not on this night. "It's huge," Frankfort senior split end Brandon Pritchard said of the showdown between the top two teams in the league last season. "We're the defending conference champions and we didn't want to lose it in the first round. I think all the guys set a good tone for the rest of the conference." Suttons Bay scored on its first drive of the first half, a 1-yard run by Elliott Gallagher. Forton kicked the extra point. But the rest of the first half belonged to Frankfort and its passing game. Garrett Luxford hit Pritchard with a 6-yard TD pass and Kris Snyder kicked the first of three extra points to make it 7-7 after one quarter. Frankfort scored twice in the second quarter on a 2-yard run by Kevin Nerg and a 32-yard pass from Luxford to Pritchard with 1:05 left in the half. Luxford hit on 6 of 7 passes in the first half for 122 yards. Pritchard caught five of those passes for 113 yards. As much as Frankfort's passing game hurt Suttons Bay in the first half, so did the penalty flags. The Norse were called for 12 fouls for more than 100 yards in the contest. Most of those came in the first half. "We beat ourselves," Trudeau said. "There's no doubt in my mind."
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