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For a moment, Loyalsock had an enormous fourth-down goal-line stand with less than six minutes on the scoreboard. Loyalsock's defense held strong for four consecutive plays inside the 5-yard line and shifted momentum.
But an unfortunate penalty resulted in a facemask on that fourth-down stand and, in turn, it gave Bloomsburg another shot on fourth-and-goal from the 1 yard line. And this time, Bloomsburg converted.
After being denied on the previous run, Shane Frey took it under center on a tush-push type of play and scored a go-ahead touchdown for the Panthers with 5:56 to play.
Loyalsock had a chance to rally with less than a minute left, but time simply ran out and Bloomsburg left Loyalsock with an exciting 28-21 win against the Lancers.
"Obviously it was huge. I really couldn't believe it. They were doing a great job and kept giving us half a yard, half a yard and at the end, we made that tush-push kind of deal and Shane did a great job with that," Bloomsburg coach Mike Kogut said. "When you get things like that, you have to take advantage of them and luckily we did."
"Adversity is part of life and these kids have learned an awful lot about adversity, and today's another example," Loyalsock coach Justin Van Fleet said. "Rise up and don't make excuses. You just keep going."
Loyalsock prevented Bloomsburg from extending its lead on the Panthers' final possession that began with 5:17 left. But Bloomsburg used seven plays to eat up almost five minutes before punting and giving Loyalsock one last chance with 25 seconds to play on their own 40.
Dyson Dupont showed great poise in that final 25-second possession, twice finding Zion Cobb for pickups of 15 and 12 yards. But with no timeouts and the clock running, Loyalsock had to go deep on its final play from the 33 and Dupont tried finding Joel Stiger deep down the right-hand side of the field. The play was good and Stiger had a bit of a step on his defender, but the ball had a tad too much on it and sailed incomplete as the horn went off inside the stadium.
"It's a situation where we had some opportunities on the field and we did not capitalize," Van Fleet said. "At the end of the game, we're pushing the ball down field to try to get a shot at the endzone and just didn't get there. I think if there's a miunte on the clock, we're able to get a score and take care of business, but that's not what happened."
After a scoreless first quarter, Loyalsock and Bloomsburg went back-and-forth seemingly exchanging scores. Anytime the Panthers scored to go ahead, Loyalsock would tie it up shortly afterwards.
But Loyalsock was never able to take the lead on Friday night. Loyalsock tied the game at 7-7, 14-14 and 21-21 but was never able to get a go-ahead score to shift away some momentum.
"It's the old bend, but not break mentality. When we needed a stop, we made a stop. They saw some things in the secondary. (Dupont) did a great job as a freshman throwing the ball and they were protecting," Kogut said. "I know coach (Steve Weigle was dialing up a whole bunch of different things and they were responding. But we did what we needed to do at different times throughout the game."
Dupont, just a freshman, played fantastic. After being held to just 75 yards in the first half of the game, the Lancer played great in the final two quarters as he ended with 257 yards on 20 for 30 passing with no interceptions. All three of Loyalsock's touchdowns were from Dupont as he found a different target for each one.
In the second quarter with 1:16 until halftime, Dupont had a 25-yard strike to Clynton Taylor to tie it at 7-all.
With 6:00 left in the third, Dupont had a 21-yard touchdown to Cobb to tie it at 14-14.
And finally, with 11:27 to play in the game, it was Dupont to Ivan Baker for three yards for a 21-21 tie.
"He's an individual who works incredibly hard and an individual who holds himself accountable. Hes an individual who has a tremendous amount of confidence not just in his ability, but the team's ability. He's a catalyzing force within the roster and a person," Van Fleet said of the freshman. "I'm very proud of his efforts, but as he will be the first to tell you, he's one of 11 guys on field and one of 44 men on the team. He looks at everyone as equal parts of what we're doing and I guarantee if you talk to him, he's proud to be a part of the team. He's proud to certainly be a catalyst for what we're doing."
Bloomsburg narrowly out-gained Loyalsock in total offense, 380-323. Loyalsock wasn't able to get a run game established, being held to just 66 rushing yards on 21 carries.
Bloomsburg ran the ball 46 times for nearly 300 yards as Jharee Moore-Stewart ran it 11 times for 108 yards and Frey did a lot of damage with his legs, rushing 14 times for 49 yards and three touchdowns. Julius Serrano ran for 62 yards on nine rushes and Wyatt Schrader had 10 rushes for 62 yards.
"Obviously our offense, I'm really happy with our offense. We were able to keep the ball away from them and control the clock. Got the ball in a lot of different guys hands and they all made plays," Kogut said. "Up front, kind of similar to last week. We came in a little slow which I don't like, but we challenged them and they responded. We made some good adjustments as well. Just a great team effort."
Bloomsburg had five drives on Friday night last at least eight plays, including a 13-play drive that ate up five minutes in the first quarter, a 10-play drive that went 90 yards in more than four minutes in the second quarter, a 10-play touchdown drive that ate up roughly four-and-a-half minutes in the third quarter and a 10-play, 72-yard touchdown drive in the fourth quarter that chewed up six minutes.
"Give guys the ball a little bit and get a break, get some other guys (in). We just challenged our guys up front at the line of scrimmage and they did," Kogut said of the lengthy drives. "I give a lot of credit the last two weeks to our offensive line responding, especially in the second half. I don't know what we ran for but to get those 10-, 12-, 13-play drives is really special to do that."
"They were able to capitalize on a lot of things," Van Fleet added. "Get the ball down the field and have some advantageous situations. We have to continue to work to get better."