WELLINGTON – Friday night’s Class 2A Division II summit meeting between Gruver and Wellington at Powell Field presented ample evidence that both teams will be heard from well after the regular season’s over – and that they could even meet again.
At the end of the night after a battle between two unbeatens, though, the team making the long trip back home could say they were better, at least for 48 minutes.
Gruver closed out strong over Wellington, scoring the final 21 points of the game in the fourth quarter as Jett Pittman had a career night with five second half scoring passes to lift the Greyhounds to a 56-28 victory. With the win, Gruver improved to 5-0 while Wellington fell to 4-1.
There was a lot to be happy about for the Greyhounds and coach Kurt Haberthur when the evening ended. But it’s the hallmark of a team which made the state semifinals last year that the coach still found some things that needed work after a big road win.
“We had several things that broke down on us and things that we can clean up and be better at,” Haberthur said. “As far as the second half and executing like we did and locking our defense down the way we did, we’re pleased with that. Wellington is a very good team and we felt like this was a playoff atmosphere and we kind of approached it like that. We knew there would be a lot of people and a lot of hype around it and that’s what makes it fun.”
By that measure, nobody had more fun than Pittman. The junior showed why he belongs in his spot with a defining performance that bodes well for Gruver’s championship hopes.
Pittman made the most of his throws against the Skyrockets, completing 13-of-24 for 341 yards and six touchdowns. Most of those highlights came in the second half, when the Greyhounds were almost unstoppable through the air.
“I just thought we really stepped up in the second half, the offensive line especially,” said Pittman, properly crediting the guys up front as he also ran for a touchdown. “We definitely won the trench battle. I’ve got to give all the praise to them. They allow me to throw the ball and I just sit back there and throw it.”
Pittman faced the unenviable challenge of replacing Briggs Satterfield at quarterback before the season started. The jury’s still out on what Pittman’s Gruver legacy will be, but he’s already making his own mark.
“He’s been playing really well,” Haberthur said of Pittman. “He’s a great kid and competitor. He wants those opportunities, but as well as he’s played I think he can play even better.”
The first half was fairly hit and miss offensively, but Gruver came alive late with touchdowns in the final four minutes of the half to take a 21-14 lead at halftime.
Both teams seemed error-plagued early. Wellington’s Jake Chandler failed to cleanly field a pop-up opening kickoff and Gruver recovered at the Wellington 34-yard line. Six plays later, Jett Pittman hit Jimmy Cantu on a 25-yard scoring pass to give the Greyhounds a 7-0 lead.
It only took the Skyrockets 44 seconds to respond, as quarterback Callen Kane ran a basic draw up the middle and took it 58 yards for a touchdown to tie it 7-7.
Wellington kept it tied despite the fact Kane threw a pair of first quarter interceptions which ended a pair of potential scoring opportunities. They both came after the Skyrockets blocked a Gruver punt.
“I feel like it was a tale of two halves for us,” Wellington coach Greg Proffitt said. “In the first half I feel like we missed a lot of opportunities when we had a short field a couple of times and don’t score. We had two interceptions and an opening kickoff blunder and that’s three times (the Greyhounds) had extra possessions in the first half. When you’re playing a team like them that’s really good you can’t do things like that although we played really good defense then.”
The Skyrockets took advantage of a short field early in the second quarter, when on fourth-and-10 at Gruver’s 20, they gambled and Kane got his first completion of the game, a 14-yarder to Carson Kane. Two plays later, Carson Kane scored on a 3-yard run to give Wellington a 14-7 lead.
Pittman was a part of two huge plays which helped give Gruver the lead. Like Callen Kane, he showed he could pull off the quarterback draw, as he scored on a 37-yard run to tie it 14-14 with 3:53 left in the first half.
The Greyhounds then forced a three-and-out after a sack of Callen Kane and took over at the Wellington 47 following a punt. Pittman hit Grady Satterfield for a 35-yard gain down to the Wellington 6 to put the Greyhounds in prime scoring position.
Two plays later, Quinn Conyers carried it in from 3 yards out to give Gruver a 21-14 lead with 16 seconds left in the half.
The biggest plays in the second half were two scoring passes from Pittman to tight end Bo Cowan, the only two balls Cowan caught. On the first score after taking the second half kickoff, Pittman laid one over the middle to Cowan, who beat the defense and juked some defenders to complete a 45-yard score to make it 28-14. Then on the first play of the fourth quarter, Pittman hit an incredibly wide open Cowan to make it 42-28 and give the Greyhounds back all their momentum.
“Bo’s such a good blocker and you have to respect that and teams see that but it allows him to get out in the open,” Pittman said. “He’s a great player. Very high IQ, very hard worker and he’s also the heart of our defense at linebacker.”
Wellington’s Kamron Brooks made a pair of huge plays in the third quarter to keep the Skyrockets competitive. In the third quarter, he took advantage of the only mistake Pittman made in the second half, returning an interception 25 yards for a touchdown to cut Gruver’s lead to 28-21.
The Greyhounds responded with a 31-yard scoring pass from Pittman to Trentin Aranda to make it 35-21. Wellington responded with a 57-yard bomb from Callen Kane to Brooks to cut it to 35-28 with 44 seconds left in the quarter, and a tense finish seemed imminent.
However, Pittman found Cowan for his second score in the fourth quarter, and threw two scoring passes to Mason Lankford for the final margin.
“The reason (the Greyhounds) are on the schedule is because they are good,” Proffitt said. “We want to try to win a district championship and some playoff games and a team like Gruver is going to help us do that.”
Photo gallery by Joe Garcia III:
