Mendota’s Mitch Walter gives a bear hug tackle to Marengo’s Oliver Muradian while Trojan teammates Breyden Lindenmeyer and Bryson Prusator, right, move in for assistance on Sept. 29 at the MHS field. (Reporter photo)

MENDOTA – Mendota finally broke down the door to victory last week against Rockford Lutheran. The Trojans were pounding on it hard again against Marengo.

But Mendota couldn’t get that final push, and the Indians managed to slam the door shut late in the fourth quarter to seize a 34-27 victory over the Trojans in a nonconference game on Homecoming night Sept. 29 at the MHS field.

The Trojans, who fell to 1-5 on the season, led by as many as nine points in the second half. But Marengo managed to score three of the final four touchdowns in the game to escape with the win.

“There were big plays on both sides,” said MHS coach Brock Sondgeroth. “Unfortunately, (Marengo) made more of them.”

Sandwiched around a pair of 1-yard touchdown runs, Marengo found the end zone on two sizeable pass plays and a long run. Two of its touchdown drives took less than a minute and 36 seconds to complete.

The Indians only needed to cover 45 yards on their first scoring drive when Mendota was forced to punt from deep in its own territory after its opening possession of the game. Marengo used six plays to cover the 45 yards, capped off by a 1-yard plunge by quarterback Travis Knaak. The PAT kick was no good. The big play of the series was a 27-yard pass completed from Knaak to Michael Anderson that placed the ball at the 1-yard line.

The Trojans benefited from an aerial strike on their ensuing possession to answer Marengo’s TD. Starting from its own 34, Mendota pounded the ball on ground for 12 plays and advanced to the Indian 29. That’s when quarterback Bryson Prusator hooked up with Preston O’Sadnick on a 27-yard pass completion down to the 2. Edwin Angulo finished off the 14-play, 66-yard drive when he dove and just extended the ball past the goal line at the 11:56 mark of the second quarter. Angulo added the extra-point kick to give the Trojans a 7-6 lead.

After an exchange of punts, Marengo regained the lead with 5:16 to go in the half, when on a fourth-and-8 play, Knaak dropped in a 29-yard touchdown pass to Finnigan Schirmer to make it a 12-7 contest. The Indians’ two-point pass attempt was incomplete.

The Trojans started their ensuing possession at their own 27 with 5:09 left before intermission. Mendota used up all but 23 seconds of that time as it traveled the 73 yards in 13 plays, the final play being a 1-yard TD run by Prusator, followed by an Angulo PAT kick to make it 14-12 at the break.

In the previous three games, Mendota has been able to easily pull of a successful onside kick. So the Trojans tried it again to start the second half, and they made it four in a row when Angulo pounced on his own kickoff at the Marengo 44-yard line. The Trojans picked up 9 yards to the 35 before a 5-yard penalty set them back to the 40. But on the next play, Ben Bokus broke free around the left end and sprinted to the 1, where he was knocked out of bounds. After a loss of 1 yard, Kiandre Morris finished off the drive with a 2-yard touchdown run just over a minute into the second half. Angulo’s successful extra-point kick gave Mendota a 21-12 lead.

Marengo quickly cut into the Trojan lead when it used up just over a minute and a half of clock to cover 62 yards in five plays, the final one being a 23-yard touchdown pass from Knaak to Aaron Shepard. Shepard added the extra-point kick to cut Mendota’s lead to two.

The offense stalled for both teams over the final nine minutes of the third quarter, with each side unable to take advantage of good field position.

But the scoring resumed in the fourth period, with Marengo putting a pair of TDs on the board to come away with the victory.

The Indians regained the lead when they completed a two-play, 54-yard drive in just 17 seconds early in the fourth. A 43-yard touchdown run by Oliver Muradian followed by a Shepard kick made it 26-21.

But that Marengo lead was extremely short-lived, as in just 18 seconds. Starting their ensuing possession at their own 19, Prusator dumped off a short pass to Bokus, and the speedster did the rest when he avoided would-be Marengo tacklers and then ran away from the pursuing Indians for an 81-yard touchdown. Angulo split the uprights on the PAT kick, but on the play, Marengo was called for roughing the kicker, so Mendota elected to take the point off the board and try for the two-point conversion from the 1 1/2-yard line. But the two-point run was unsuccessful, and Mendota led 27-26 with 9:07 to go.

The Trojan defense needed a stop on Marengo’s next possession, but another big play by the Indians led to the eventual game-winning touchdown. Knaak completed a 40-yard pass to Shepard that moved the ball to the Mendota 11, then Knaak put the Indians on top with a 1-yard touchdown run with 5:30 left. Knaak also ran in the two-point conversion to make it 34-27.

Mendota got a huge 51-yard kickoff return by Morris that set up the offense at the Marengo 31-yard line. But the Indian defense came up big when Schirmer picked off a Prusator pass and ran it back for a touchdown. That TD was erased when the Indians were called for a block-in-the-back penalty, but Marengo was still able to run out the clock when Knaak ran for 48 yards to inside Mendota territory with just 1:25 left.

The Trojan offense churned out 290 yards in the contest compared to 367 for Marengo. Bokus had 74 yards rushing and Prusator threw for 108.

Mendota’s offense took a hit early in the game when center Preston Lewis went out with an ankle injury. That forced the Trojans to rearrange their offensive line, which then included two sophomores.

“We had two sophomores in there and it was hard for us to get our offense going when we had to shift things around,” Sondgeroth said. “But I thought our guys played extremely hard and I’m proud of our effort.”