CHENEY – While not dead yet, the Blackhawks football playoff hopes are definitely on life support, put there by a 33-27 league loss on Oct. 25 at West Valley.
After a scoreless first quarter, West Valley quarterback Matthew Allen threw the first two of four touchdown passes, 29 yards and 15 yards strikes to Alyjouah Rollins for a 12-0 Eagles lead. Cheney responded to cut the margin in half at the intermission with a Dylan Straley nine-yard TD run.
From there, the teams essentially exchanged scores. Allen found Treden Davis-Reed with a 12-yard TD pass in the third, countered quickly by a kickoff return for touchdown by Cheney’s Dalton Harriet that cut West Valley’s lead to 19-13.
Allen’s fourth TD put the Eagles back up by 13 early in the fourth quarter, hitting running back Malachi Clark on a 15-yard strike. Harriet’s second TD of the half, a three-yard run, brought Cheney again within six points.
Allen’s fifth TD of the night, a 29-yard run, gave West Valley a 33-20 lead, but the Blackhawks again drew near on a seven-yard TD pass from Straley to running back Tayvin Ewen. Cheney eventually ran out of time.
The Blackhawks drop to 1-2 in the Great Northern League, 4-4 overall, and face a must-win situation this Friday against second-place Pullman (2-1, 6-2) at home in the regular-season finale. The Greyhounds are 2-2 on the road, and have outscored their opponents 236-97.
A Cheney win along with a West Valley win over East Valley (0-3, 1-6) would leave a three-way tie between the two schools and Pullman, all at 2-2. A Kansas City-style tiebreaker would be played on Tuesday, Nov. 5, between the three schools at a neutral site to determine the league’s No. 2 seed to regional playoff action with the Central Washington Athletic Conference.
Sixth-ranked Clarkston (4-0, 7-1) has wrapped up the league title and No. 1 seed.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
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