Your Prep Sports

A week ago, Beau Cornwell ran for the go-ahead score, plunging into the end zone on a fourth-down quarterback sneak to give West Branch a 45-41 lead over Bellevue with less than a minute remaining.

Friday’s encore from Cornwell was even more impressive.

Cornwell hit a 42-yard field goal with 48 seconds left to lift Class 1A eighth-ranked West Branch to a come-from-behind 24-23 win over Durant in a District 3 matchup in Durant.

“It’s about the same,” Cornwell said when asked which late game situation was more nerve wracking. “I have total trust in my guys and they were just leaning on me hoping I would get it through and it was just a great feeling.”

The late kick by Cornwell helped West Branch improve to 6-0 on the season and 4-0 in district 3 play while Durant dropped to 2-4 and 1-3 in district games.

For the second week in a row the Bears needed some late-game magic from their junior quarterback to stay unbeaten.

Cornwell led a pair of fourth quarter scoring drives last week in a 45-41 win over No. 9 Bellevue.

On Friday Cornwell, marched West Branch 37 yards in eight plays to set up his own 42-yard field goal at gave the Bears the lead.

“It’s good we had a couple of close games, two in a row so we know our team can handle that,” Cornwell said. “We know we can go down the field on an 80-yard drive and score with the game on the line.”

Last week’s meeting with Bellevue was expected to be tight in the fourth quarter.

The matchup with the Wildcats on Friday, a team that lost to Bellevue by 30 points in week four was perhaps not expected to be as competitive but Durant was up to the task.

Junior quarterback Bryce Lafrenz passed for 255 yards and three touchdowns including a 16 yarder to Marcus Engstler with 4:06 left that gave Durant a 23-21 lead.

West Branch had the answer as Cornwell led the game-winning drive that ended with his school-record sixth made field goal of the season, a career-long 42-yarder.

“I’ve seen Beau do it a million times in practice so I was pretty confident,” West Branch senior Ben Thompson said. “I knew it was going in.”

Thompson and Cornwell connected for the key play on what turned into the game-winning driving, 35-yard pitch and catch on 4th and 5 from the West Branch 43-yard line with 3 minutes to play.

“It was good to have a close game under our belt,” Thompson said. “We just had to do what did last week, play tough at crunch time and we were able to do that.”

A week after Jacob Graves set a school record with for receiving yards in a game with 168, Thompson established a new mark, catching eight passes for 176 yards and two touchdowns.

“We just took what the defense was giving us,” Thompson said. “We saw press on the outside and Beau just threw me the ball and I made the plays.”

West Branch led 14-9 at halftime thanks to a 29-yard touchdown grab by Thompson and a 5-yard touchdown run by Tanner Lukavsky.

Durant held leads of 17-14 and 23-21 following touchdown passes from Lafrenz.

Cornwell went 17-of-29 passing for 222 yards on Friday with a pair of touchdowns.

Lukavsky finished with 66 yards and a score and Graves ran for 46 yards in relief of Lukavsky.

Five different Bears had receptions led by Thompson and Graves who caught four passes for 30 yards.

“We are just taking what the defense is giving us,” Cornwell said. “If that means open looks for Ben or open looks for anyone else we are just going to take them and roll with it.”

Evan O’Neil clinched the win when he picked off a Lafrenz pass with 29 seconds left.

John Hatfield led the West Branch defensive effort with seven tackled including two for loss.

Jacob Barnhart, Andrew Black, Cameron Howsare and Dalyn Pedersen all had sacks for the Bears.

West Branch returns to action next week when it travels to North Cedar (1-5)

“It’s definitely good that we got the win,” Cornwell said. “We are going to go into film tomorrow and try to correct the mistakes that we made.”

 

                                DUR               WB

First Downs               13                    17

Rushes-Yards            28-28               33-122

Comp-Att-Int             16-38-1            17-29-2

Passing Yards            255                  222

Punts-Avg.                 7-27.7              2-41

Fumbles-Lost             1-1                   2-1

Penalties-Yards         6-45                 5-40

Durant                        7     2    8     6   –  23 

West Branch              14    0    0    10  –  24

DUR – Tristan Hughes 30 pass from Bryce Lafrenz (Hector Gonzales kick)          

WB – Ben Thompson 29 pass from Beau Cornwell (Cornwell kick)                       

WB – Tanner Lukavsky 5 run (Cornwell kick)                                                         

DUR – Team Safety                                                                                                  

DUR – Mason Compton 25 pass from Lafrenz (Lafrenz pass)                     

WB – Thompson 32 pass from Cornwell (Cornwell kick)                           

DUR – Marcus Engstler 16 pass from Lafrenz (Kick failed)                         

WB – Cornwell 42 Field Goal

Individual Statistics

RUSHING – WB: Tanner Lukavsky 12-66, Jacob Graves 13-46, Beau Cornwell 10-20. 

PASSING – WB: Beau Cornwell 17-29-2 222.

RECEIVING – WB: Ben Thompson 8-176, Jacob Graves 4-30, Brett Schiele 2-3, Peter Espensen 1-15, Tanner Lukavsky 2-(-2).