Butte's Bulldogs blow by Wolfpack

Butte’s offensive onslaught was too much for Glacier to overcome as the Wolfpack fell 55-28 to the Bulldogs in Class AA football action on Friday night at Legends Stadium.

The second-ranked team in the state racked up 590 yards of offense and was on the board less than a minute into the game when Quinn Sullivan hauled in a short pass from Tommy Mellott and took it the distance for a 50-yard score.

Mellott – committed to play at Montana State next season – was unstoppable, throwing for 298 yards and four touchdowns and piling up 124 yards on the ground.

“Tommy Mellott’s the real deal ... I don’t know if you really can stop them, nobody has yet,” Glacier head coach Grady Bennett said.

Glacier’s (1-3) offense got off to a promising start, answering with a touchdown of its own on just four plays. Drew Deck made a spectacular play for the score, catching the ball on the 10-yard line before using some fancy footwork to escape two defensive backs, find the end zone and fire up the large Homecoming crowd.

Deck finished the game with a team-high 82 yards receiving on five catches.

But just over a minute later, the Bulldogs (4-0) recaptured the lead on a 70-yard play-action pass down the field to a wide open Ryan Neil.

The Wolfpack offense came up empty on its next two drives, while Butte continued to cruise with the ball. Mellott’s 13-yard touchdown run on the first play of the second quarter made it 26-6.

“I knew it was going to be a challenge for our defense to stop their offense,” Bennett said. “The key for us was to play really well in the other two areas, special teams and on offense. We had to keep the ball away from them and we had to execute and score points and we didn’t do that.”

Jake Rendina cut the lead to 26-13 with a 3-yard touchdown run, but the Bulldogs scored two touchdowns late in the half to make it 41-13. The dagger was a 65-yard touchdown with 18 seconds to go on a perfectly thrown long ball from Mellott to Banner Cetaro.

Another touchdown throw from Allen to Deck was one of Glacier’s lone highlights in the second half. On fourth-and-goal from the eight, Allen threw a bullet to a leaping Deck at the back of the end zone for the score.

But it was too late to threaten Butte’s commanding lead.

“We were sloppy on offense, we didn’t execute very well ... we made mistakes and you can’t beat good teams, or beat average teams doing that,” Bennett said.

“We’ve got to get a lot better. That’s the challenge now. There’s a lot of things that we can correct, we’ve got to work hard and keep getting better.”

Rendina led the team in rushing with 151 yards, and Allen passed for 143 yards and three touchdowns. JD Shew hauled in Allen’s third touchdown pass with 3:32 to go in the game.

Next week Glacier will try to snap its three-game losing streak at Missoula Big Sky.

“This year we started fast, and now we’re sputtering a little bit,” Bennett said.

“We’ve got to make sure we come back to work focused and come back to that high execution. I don’t think we’re good enough to not execute on a really high level and win football games.”

Butte 20 21 14 0 — 55

Glacier 6 7 7 8 — 28

B — Quinn Sullivan 50 pass from Tommy Mellott (Casey Kautzman kick failed)

G — Drew Deck 33 pass from JT Allen (Jake Rendina PAT run failed)

B — Ryan Neil 70 pass from Mellott (Kautzman kick)

B — Peyton Hettick 33 pass from Mellott (Kautzman kick)

B — Mellott 13 run (Kautzman kick blocked)

G — Rendina 3 run (Patrick Rohrbach kick)

B — Kameron Moreno 2 run (Mellott PAT run)

B — Banner Cetaro 65 pass from Mellott (Kautzman kick)

B — Moreno 1 run (Kautzman kick)

G — Deck 7 pass from Allen (Rohrbach kick)

B — Kobe Moreno 9 run (Kautzman kick)

G — JD Shew 6 pass from Allen (Deck PAT run)

Team Statistics

B G

First Downs 25 19

Rushing 46-292 32-162

Passing 11-18-298 13-26-146

Total offense 590 308

Fumbles-lost 0-0 4-1

Penalties-yards 12-116 6-54

Punts-avg. 2-36.5 3-29

Individual Statistics

Passing — Butte, Tommy Mellott 11-18-298-4-0; Glacier, JT Allen 13-25-146-3-1.

Rushing — Butte, Tommy Mellott 17-124, Kameron Moreno 14-92, Kobe Moreno 7-38, Josh Nelson 4-29; Glacier, Jake Rendina 20-151, KL Johnson 2-23.

Receiving — Butte, Banner Cetraro 3-91, Peyton Hettick 3-51, Quinn Sullivan 2-51; Glacier, Drew Deck 5-82, Colin Bowden 2-24, JD Shew 2-18, Luke Bilau 2-10.