PITTSFIELD, Mass. -- It is just as well they have not put up a scoreboard yet at Gene Dellea Field.
In the second half on Thursday night, the Taconic football team played like it did not know or care about the score.
Taconic battled back from a 28-6 half-time deficit and nearly pulled out an upset win before falling to South Hadley, 28-24, as the Tigers (5-2) cemented first place in the Suburban North with a 4-0 league record with one week left.
“The kids played out of their minds,” Taconic coach Jim Ziter said. “They played a great game. Every single one of them … they played for each other in the second half. We asked them to win the half, and they did.
“They came up short, but I’m extremely proud of them.”
Haywood Eurquhart ran for 101 yards and Tyrell Beverly ran for 98 yards and three touchdowns in the comeback effort.
Taconic (3-4, 2-2), which suffered two blowout losses earlier in the season, looked to be on the verge of adding another when it went to the locker room down by three scores.
But this time, it was a different script.
“They played for each other,” Ziter said in explaining the second-half surge. “The entire team played for each other. That’s what it took to do what they did tonight.”
The biggest difference came on the defensive side of the ball. South Hadley’s Hunter Carey and Liam Dawson combined for 167 yards on the ground in the first half. The tandem finished with just 189 yards between them.
The Tigers went up 22-0 early in the second quarter when Dawson scampered in from the 17 on third-and-9.
But a 50-yard kick return by Dylan Burke set up Taconic at the plus-20, and Eurquhart and Marquis Sanders needed just two carries to get the ball into the end zone to make it 22-6. Taconic missed the first of four unsuccessful two-point conversions and it stayed a 16-point margin.
South Hadley answered with a 65-yard kick return by Carey to re-establish its 22-point margin, and that is where it stayed at the break.
Taconic forced South Hadley to punt on its first second-half possession, and after a 15-yard penalty pushed Ziter’s squad back to its 15, it marched 85 yards the other way, ending the drive on a 19-yard Beverly run to get within two scores at 28-12.
Taconic’s defense did not allow another South Hadley first down the rest of the way.
Beverly’s 28-yard punt return gave Taconic the ball at the plus-40 on its next possession, and Beverly scored on a 31-yard run to make it 28-18.
Then Burke recovered a fumble at midfield, and Taconic drove 50 yards to get within four points midway through the fourth quarter.
A second-down fumble by the Tigers at midfield gave Taconic the ball with plenty of time to stall, but the drive possession stalled when a fourth-down pass into a stiff wind was well off the mark.
“It was tough to throw in the wind,” Ziter said. “It takes away some options.”
South Hadley took over on downs at midfield with a chance to put the game away with a first down or two, but Taconic did not even allow the one and got the ball back after a punt at its 27 with a minute to go.
Beverly ran for 27-yards to get the ball to midfield, but Taconic, which had used its timeouts on defense, saw the game come to an end while scrambling to get to the line on third down.
Taconic finishes the regular season next Saturday against Pittsfield at BCC’s Dellea Field, a home game for the Generals, who face Hoosac Valley on Friday night.
