Photo by Aaron Crutchfield - Atascadero’s Trevor Holloway looks to get around the corner for big yardage during the Greyhounds’ 27-19 loss to Gilroy on Friday.

Although the Atascadero High School varsity football team is known for running the ball and sustaining drives, the Greyhounds scored all their points via the big play on Friday against Gilroy.

The problem for Atascadero is the Hounds had no long, sustained drives and luck didn’t strike enough times in a 27-19 loss to Gilroy, a team that is usually a threat for the big play but had a few long drives of its own.

“We’re a team still searching for an identity,” said Atascadero coach Vic Cooper. “That was a team we certainly could have beat. That was not a [St. Bonaventure], but they’re a great football team, they’re probably going to go on and win their section.”

Things looked relatively good for the Hounds early. Although Gilroy drove the length of the field, a 24-yard touchdown pass was called back for holding, and another holding call and a sack put the Mustangs at fourth-and-43, forcing a punt.

Although the Hounds were forced to punt on their opening possession, they were still able to draw first blood late in the first quarter after a Gilroy fumble put Atascadero at the Mustangs’ 43-yard line. Brad Smet found Alex Wolf for a 43-yard touchdown pass on the first play of the possession to give the Hounds a 6-0 lead with 1:38 left in the opening quarter.

But a little offensive trickery helped the Mustangs get on the board early in the second quarter. On fourth-and-three at the 39-yard line, Gilroy quarterback Jamie Jensen passed the ball to Peter Guenther, who made it all the way to the two-yard line. Right before he was tackled, he pitched the ball to wide receiver Jordan Mitchell, who took it in for the touchdown. The extra-point kick put Gilroy on top 7-6.

Later in the quarter, Dante Fullard took a lateral from Jensen and passed it 44 yards to Hale for a touchdown with 1:08 left in the half. The extra-point kick made it 14-6 Gilroy, where the score stood at halftime. Atascadero had two more drives after the touchdown, but both ended in interceptions, the final one in the end zone as time expired in the second quarter.

After the Hounds’ first drive of the second half ended in a fumble, Gilroy extended the lead with a 28-yard field goal with 10:21 left in the period.

But the big play put Atascadero back in the game, with Nick Tenhaeff breaking off a 65-yard touchdown run to bring Atascadero to within 17-12 with 10:21 left in the third quarter.

Gilroy responded with a 72-yard drive, with all but nine of those yards coming on the ground. Guenther ran 38 yards for the touchdown with 8:42 left in the quarter, and the extra-point kick made the score 24-12.

Although Gilroy is typically a passing team, Guenther finished with 137 yards on the ground, most of it coming in chunks of 10 or 12 yards.

“We probably ran the ball a little more because they were less in the front and spread the field a little more than what we typically see,” said Gilroy coach Rich Hammond. “We were able to run the ball a little more because they did definitely try to defend the short pass and take all those passing lanes away, which allowed us to run the ball.”

The big play struck again for Atascadero, as Sterling Bullard took the ensuing kickoff and returned it 99 yards for a touchdown, with the extra-point kick making the score 24-19.

But the Mustangs responded with a 28-yard field goal on the next drive to make it a 27-19 game. An unsportsmanlike conduct flag against the Hounds helped sustain the drive for Gilroy, turning a second-and-20 situation at the 35-yard line into first down at the 50.

The Hounds’ big play well went dry in the fourth quarter and they couldn’t successfully sustain a drive, either. Opportunity knocked when the Mustangs missed a field goal with 8:04 left in the fourth quarter that would have made it a two-score game, but the Hounds drove from their own 20 to the 48 and stalled out there, with an incompletion on fourth-and-12.

The Mustangs had the ball on fourth-and-two with just under a minute and a half left, but the Hounds jumped offisdes for a five-yard penalty and a Gilroy first down.

The Mustangs kneeled down four times to run out the clock, although confusion ensued on which down it was and whether Atascadero should have had a down or two in the final seconds.

“I thought it was fourth down, I thought it was our ball, I thought they took a knee too early on each of their possessions there on the end, and therefore I had my offense ready because I was in belief that as fast as they were snapping it, we were going to get a couple more snaps,” Cooper said.

But instead, the Hounds never got to touch the ball again and their record fell to 1-2 on the season.

Tenhaeff finished with 148 yards rushing on 17 carries, while Smet was 4-for-10 passing for 72 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions. Bullard had 186 yards on four kickoff returns.

“Preseason is there for a reason,” Cooper said. “We’ve got to get better, I think we’ve got to search for an identity and we’ve got to have a good week of practice.”

The Hounds are next in action on Friday, Sept. 26 against Redwood at 7:30 p.m. at the Mineral King Bowl in Visalia.