Dillon drops nailbiter to Billings Central

By Ed West - 11/07/2009

BILLINGS — Billings Central's been here before and it's a good thing.

The Rams overcame two very good teams, Frenchtown and Laurel, to win in the fourth quarter and that experience didn't hurt Saturday afternoon. Central put together a grinding 86-yard drive in the final period to beat Dillon 7-3 and move on to a semifinal game against Belgrade.

It was a physical battle between two traditional A powers and it looked like a 30-yard field goal by Dillon's Trevor Rehm in the third quarter might hold up. The Beavers' rugged defense bottled up Central's Wing-T until Max Tolstedt took over. Running with a you're-not-going-stop-me demeanor, the junior fullback battered his way down field to keep the Rams unbeaten at 10-0.

"Just urgency," Toldstedt said of the mood on the field. "Coach (Jim Stanton) said we got to come out and get the job down. We had a lot of missed opportunities in the first half so we had to capitalize on the ones in the second half which we did."

Tolstedt scored on an 8-yard run, blasting out of a couple of tackles.

"I just got it in my mind, I was going get to the end zone," Toldstedt said. "I ran as hard as I could and I ended up there. It's pretty exciting."

Toldstedt gained 54 yards on the 15-play drive and finished with 107 on 18 carries. But there was still plenty of nervous time for the Rams. They twice had to convert on fourth down to keep the march alive. Quarterback Cole Cattelan's two-yard sneak got the first conversion at the Dillon 38 and his four-yard run around left end got the second at the Beavers 27. The Ram also got a break when Dillon was flagged for a 15-yard face mask penalty on a completion to Kevin O'Brien that netted no yards and would have left a fourth-and-10.

The penalty put the ball on the 12 and Tolstedt scored two plays later with 4:27 remaining.

Joe Warren recovered a fumble on the kickoff and Central ran off all but 52 seconds, giving up the ball at the Dillon 32. The Beavers got one first down, but J.T. Linder threw four straight incompletions and the Rams ran off the final 25 seconds.

Neither team could really get much going. The Rams finished with 202 total yards, 153 under their average. The Beavers managed just 168 which was 163 below their normal output. All of which resulted in 14 punts, seven by each side.

Not that there weren't some missed opportunities.

Bridger Smith, Cattelan and Ryan Toner all made interceptions in the first half, but Central never got close to scoring. The best chance came after Toner's pick which set the Rams up at the Dillon 37. They got a first down at the 17, but three plays later faced a 4th-and-38 after a holding penalty, a sack and two negative plays.

Central also failed to take advantage of a 23-yard punt to the Dillon 28. The Rams eventually turned the ball over on downs at the 23. After a five-yard gain by Tolstedt, Dillon stuffed two running plays and an incomplete pass ended the threat.

An illegal shift penalty also hurt, canceling out a long pass that would have given the Rams a first down inside the Dillon 10 on their second series of the game.

Dillon (7-3) missed an opportunity after reaching the Central 20 late in the first quarter. A Linder pass was deflected by Kevin O'Brien and Smith made the interception at the 14.

In the third quarter, the Beavers pounced on a Tolstedt fumble the Central 16. After gaining just three yards, they were forced to settle for Rehm's field goal at the 7:30 mark.

"It was certainly a defensive battle all game long," said Dillon coach Terry Thomas. "Both teams really played well. We had a few chances when we got the ball on their side of the 50 and we weren't able to come away with points. We just kind of misfired on a couple of plays that if we could have hit them and somehow got in the end zone, then I think we would have won the game. Then on that last drive, if we could have got one stop, we could have run the clock out."

Central scored nine points in the fourth quarter on Sept. 19 to beat Frenchtown 16-12. On Oct. 2, Laurel held a 6-0 lead going into the fourth quarter and the Rams pulled out a 15-6 victory.

"I think that paid off," Stanton said. "We've been in situations where we've been down. We've had a real difficult schedule. We struggled a little bit and lot of that was Dillon and we had some costly penalties, turnovers at the wrong time. We just had eight minutes left and found a way to get it in."

Central will be playing Belgrade for the first time since beating the Panthers 35-14 in the first round of the 2004 playoffs. Belgrade (7-4), which was the No. 2 seed in the Central Division, knocked off Northwestern champion Polson 18-16. The other semifinal matches Frenchtown and Butte Central.

Dillon 0 0 3 0 — 3

Central 0 0 0 7 — 7

Third quarter

DIL — Trevor Rehm 30 FG 7:30

Fourth quarter

BC — Max Tolstedt 8 run (Kaleb Suek kick) 4:27

Dil BC

First downs 10 8

Rushes-yards 25-99 49-154

Comp-Att-Int 8-28-3 7-16-1

Passing yards 69 48

Total yards 168 202

Punts 7-39 7-35

Fumbles-lost 1-1 1-1

Penalties-Yards 5-35 4-35

Individual Statistics

RUSHING — Dillon: Sam Parke 8-47, J. T. Linder 10-32, Evan Helle 4-13, Garrett Banning 1-4, Ben Folsom 1-3, Toby Shepherd 1-0. Central: Tolstedt 18-107, Cole Cattelan 15-17, Kevin O'Brien 10-16, Cole Moller 3-8, James Stanton 2-6, Quinn Huppert 1-0.

PASSING — Dillon: Linder 8-27-3-69, Pete Walde 0-1-0. Central: Cattelan 3-7-0-15, Moller 4-9-1-33.

RECEIVING — Dillon: Hunter Johnson 3-25, Shepherd 2-23, MacKenzie McGrath 1-12, Helle 1-5, Banning 1-4, Parke 1-0. Central: O'Brien 3-9, Ryan Toner 2-21, Cattelan 1-16, Bridger Smith 1-2.