Burlington Central 20, Byron 14

BYRON -- It's rare for a visiting team to dominate Byron on the Tigers' home field. But Burlington Central did just that in a 20-14 Big Northern crossover victory that was not as close as the final score indicated.

Jason Wagner ran for 138 yards and 2 touchdowns and the Rockets ran up 314 yards on the ground.

Byron scored twice late in the game, including a consolation score with no time on the clock.

The Rockets outgained Byron 201-66 in the first half, and held the Tigers to minus-4 yards rushing. However, they led just 7-0 thanks to a pair of turnovers and a rash of penalties. The Tigers also downed 2 punts inside the Rockets' 5-yard line.

Neither team did much offensively in the third quarter, but things got relatively wild in the final 6 minutes. Wagner's first touchdown, on a 10-yard run, gave the Rockets a seemingly safe 13-0 lead. But after a short kickoff, the Tigers (0-3) responded with their first sustained drive of the night, moving 60 yards in 7 plays with the help of a pass interference penalty. Kyle Smith scored from 6 yards out to make it 13-7.

Central (2-1) quickly answered. After Dan Hagberg's 36-yard kickoff return, the Rockets moved 46 yards in just 6 plays, with Wagner scoring from the 1.

Byron then moved the ball 80 yards in just 1:45, but the final score was for nothing but pride.

Tommy Gast's 13-yard touchdown run was the only score of the first half.

"Overall I think we played pretty well," said Rockets' coach Aaron Wichman. "For some reason our second halves have been real good and our first halves were a little slow. Going into week 4 next week, we've got to change that. We want to come out and play four quarters, and I don't think we really did it tonight."

Co-captain Bryan Bell was more blunt.

"We came out flat," he said. "We were just talking about how some of the guys came out flat, not ready for the game on the bus. We need to work on that."

Byron switched to a spread offense this year, and quarterback David Boyle completed 20 of 31 passes for 194 yards. However, 99 of those yards came on 4 big plays, including a 40-yard screen pass on a fruitless drive at the end of the first half. Forty-eight more yards came on the final drive, so the Rockets' defense was pretty solid overall.

Hagberg ran for 73 yards, and Greg Dickson added 61 for the Rockets.