I was in Saratoga Springs on Thursday night expecting a blowout. Everybody was. Mountain Ridge had beaten Herriman 45-7. Herriman had beaten Westlake 48-7. Do the math and pack a jacket for a running clock.
Westlake didn't do the math. Mountain Ridge won 21-13, finished the regular season 10-0 and took Region 2 outright, and it walked off the field looking like a team that had lost.
| Quarter | Play | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Jaxon Hunt 32-yard pass to Xander Thayer (Mountain Ridge), PAT good | 7-0 |
| 1st | Ashton Taylor 30-yard run (Westlake), PAT good | 7-7 |
| 2nd | Hunt 12-yard pass to Tyson Dunn (Mountain Ridge), PAT good | 14-7 |
| 2nd, 0:54 | Hunt 33-yard pass to Thayer (Mountain Ridge), PAT good | 21-7 |
| 4th | Taylor 13-yard pass to Malik Sika (Westlake), two-point try failed | 21-13 |
A sloppy start, then Hunt
Mountain Ridge opened like Mountain Ridge. First possession, straight down the field, Jaxon Hunt to Xander Thayer for the touchdown. Then the script fell out of the binder.
Westlake answered out of the Wildcat, the look it lived in all night, and Ashton Taylor took it 30 yards to tie it. Mountain Ridge marched right back, and Hunt underthrew a ball that Westlake picked off. The Thunder sat on it, ran out the quarter, and it was 7-7 after one. In Saratoga Springs. Against the No. 1 team in Utah.
The Sentinels looked like they were sleepwalking. Westlake looked like it had been waiting all season for this one.
Then Hunt woke up. He found running back Tyson Dunn, who broke two tackles and then simply refused to be tackled by anybody else, muscling his way into the end zone. Mountain Ridge's defense got the ball back, and with 54 seconds left in the half, Hunt put one up for Thayer, who came down with a circus catch for his second touchdown of the night. 21-7 at the break, three touchdown passes for Hunt, and the blowout everybody expected looked like it had just started late.
It hadn't.
Westlake won the second half
Mountain Ridge didn't score again. Read that twice, because it's the story.
Westlake's defense played physical, downhill football for 24 straight minutes and made the Sentinels earn every yard they got. On offense, the Thunder kept pounding it, and when they had to throw, they threw. Sophomore Silas Taumoepeau took snaps for a stretch and made a couple of big-boy throws down the middle to Kylan Xoumphonphackdy.
Then Taylor made the play of the night. He'd been dangerous all game on QB counter, off-tackle runs and, best of all, the QB stretch. So in the fourth quarter Westlake showed stretch, Taylor pulled up, dropped back and hit Malik Sika, the Utah State commit, for a touchdown. That place was rocking.
The two-point try failed, so it was 21-13, and Westlake recovered its own onside kick near midfield. That drive died on a penalty behind the line of scrimmage that pushed the Thunder back to fourth and very long. From where we sat, the play before it looked like pass interference down the Westlake sideline with no flag. You can argue about one call. You can't argue that Westlake was a couple of plays from winning this game.
What it means for Westlake
Great season. Westlake is 7-3 and finished third in Region 2, and it lost by 41 to Herriman last month. Thursday it took the best team in the state to the final minutes on its home field.
Nobody hands out trophies for moral victories, and I'm not going to pretend a loss feels good. But step back and look at it from the state's point of view. Westlake played with heart, intensity and a very physical brand of football against an elite team, and it finished its regular season playing the best football it has played all year.
Taylor was the best player on the field for long stretches. Two ways, physical on both sides of the ball, explosive every time he touched it. Westlake has to clean up a couple of mistakes, and it gets two weeks to do it. That's a team that can beat somebody in the playoffs, and nobody seeded near it is going to want the matchup.
What it means for Mountain Ridge
Region 2 champion, again, and undefeated. The No. 1 team in Utah on our board. It's the first unbeaten regular season in school history, for a program that was 41-36 all-time entering this year and won its first region title last fall.
So why did it feel like a loss? Because they wanted more. We talked to Hunt after the game and you could see it on him. Nobody in that locker room was happy with how Thursday went.
Good. That's the best thing that could have happened to Nick Robins' team. Every coach wants to learn in a win instead of a loss, and Robins just got a full half of film to teach from without paying for it in the standings. The scary part for the rest of the state: Mountain Ridge can still get a lot better.
Now it gets a breather. The 6A playoffs don't start until October 30, and after a long, heavy season, the Sentinels get some time to rest. I expect the best version of this team to show up in November.
The bracket
Mountain Ridge is the favorite to win the state title. That should mean nothing to the Sentinels, and if they're smart they aren't listening to anybody saying it, us included.
If it holds serve, the title game probably comes down to Mountain Ridge against the survivor of Skyridge and Corner Canyon. Who ends up the No. 4 seed is still up in the air, and that's the path Mountain Ridge has to walk first.
And this year the field is open. For the last few seasons the state title has been a two-team race, usually the best two teams in Region 3. Not this year. American Fork showed Wednesday it can play with anybody when it plays its best. Westlake just showed it Thursday. Lone Peak is lurking. And Davis has won four straight and looks like a different team since its quarterback saga ended in September, with Paden Toula settled in under center.
Ten and oh is the floor. Mountain Ridge's coaches walked out of Saratoga Springs knowing it, and so did everybody who watched.
