6A — BAKER CITY HERALD
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2019
POWDER VALLEY FOOTBALL
BAKER FOOTBALL PREVIEW
Ronald Bond / The (La Grande) Observer
Reece Dixon accounted for 501 yards of offense
and seven total touchdowns in the Badgers’
come-from-behind 48-36 win over Pilot Rock/Nixy-
aawii Thursday night.
Kathy Orr / Baker City Herald fi le photo
Kaden Myer, left, and quarterback Spencer Smith are two key cogs in Baker’s chances of defeating La Grande Satur-
day and gaining a share of the Greater Oregon League title.
Bulldogs travel to La Grande with
Greater Oregon League title hopes
campus.
Baker has secured at least
Potential playoff positioning second place in the GOL, and
will be on the line Saturday
a win Saturday would give the
afternoon when Baker travels Bulldogs a share of the GOL
to La Grande for a Greater
championship with La Grande.
Oregon League football game
Baker (5-2 overall), ranked
at Community Stadium on the ninth in the Class 4A coaches’
Eastern Oregon University
poll and eighth in the OSAA
By Gerry Steele
gsteele@bakercityherald.com
poll, must defeat La Grande by
at least 10 points to tie the Ti-
gers for the GOL crown using
the AZZI tie-breaking system.
La Grande (7-0 overall),
ranked second in both polls,
defeated Baker 34-21 on Oct. 4
at Baker.
Baker will have quarter-
By Ronald Bond
The (La Grande) Observer
back Spencer Shirtcliff back
in uniform. Shirtcliff returned
to action in Baker’s 47-0
homecoming win over Ontario
on Oct. 18, after suffering a
separated shoulder at Ontario
on Sept. 27.
Saturday’s kickoff is sched-
uled for 1 p.m.
Blazers open 50th season
with loss to Denver Nuggets
■ Denver ends Portland’s NBA record streak of 18 straight wins in home openers
By Anne M. Peterson
AP Sports Writer
PORTLAND — Early foul
trouble in the season opener
wasn’t going to get Nikola
Jokic down.
He had 20 points and 13
rebounds despite sitting much
of the fi rst half, and the Den-
ver Nuggets spoiled the fi rst
game of Portland’s 50th season
with a 108-100 victory over the
Trail Blazers on Wednesday
night.
Will Barton added 19 points
for the Nuggets, who also
snapped Portland’s 18-game
winning streak in home
openers, the longest streak in
league history. Denver made
18 3-pointers.
“I didn’t want to force it. I
just wanted to win the game,”
said Jokic, who had 16 points
in the fourth quarter alone. “I
wanted to go out there to be
the positive energy to win the
game.”
Damian Lillard led the Blaz-
ers with 32 points and eight
assists, and Hassan Whiteside
had 16 points and 19 rebounds
in his Portland debut.
Whiteside, acquired in an
offseason trade with Miami,
tipped in Lillard’s 3-point at-
tempt to help the Blazers to an
88-87 lead with just under fi ve
minutes left. But the Nuggets
answered with consecutive
baskets from Jokic and Gary
Harris.
Jokic hit back-to-back
3-pointers to extend Denver’s
lead to 97-90. Lillard landed a
3-pointer with 1:58 left to nar-
row the gap but the Blazers
couldn’t catch up.
“Nikola in the fourth quar-
ter was phenomenal,” Denver
coach Michael Malone said. “I
think he had 16 and 8 in the
quarter. He showed everybody
why he’s an MVP-caliber
player.”
It was the fi rst meeting
between the teams since the
Western Conference semifi -
nals, won by the Blazers in
seven games.
“When the game was being
decided, we just had too many
lapses on both ends of the
fl oor,” Lillard said. “We put
ourselves in a position where
it was going to be hard to come
back from them.”
The Nuggets didn’t make a
lot of changes over the sum-
mer, returning the nucleus of
the team that won 54 games
last season and earned the
West’s second seed, ending a
six-year postseason drought.
The team’s biggest move was
acquiring Jerami Grant from
Oklahoma City.
Portland, meanwhile, has
six new faces on the roster,
including Whiteside, who
started at center. The Blazers
also picked up veteran big
man Pau Gasol as they await
Jusuf Nurkic’s return from a
broken leg.
The Blazers fi nished 53-29
last season and clinched the
West’s third seed, playing
through to the conference
fi nals for the fi rst time in 19
years.
Jokic collected three early
fouls and went to the bench
with 8:15 left in the fi rst quar-
ter, and the Nuggets struggled.
“In the beginning of the
OPEN TO COMMUNITY
Sponsored by Baker Branch AAUW
Badgers rally
for big upset
game it brought out a lot of
memories from last year’s se-
ries,” Jamal Murray said. “We
just wanted to come out and
have a good game and come
out with a win.”
Rodney Hood hit a 3-pointer
and made a free throw to give
Portland a 19-7 lead. Lillard’s
fi rst points of the game came
on a dunk that made it 21-16.
The Blazers closed to 70-69
on Lillard’s 3-pointer late in
the third quarter and then tied
it on Anfernee Simons’ free
throw. But they didn’t regain
the lead until Simons’ driv-
ing layup made it 74-73 and
capped a 16-6 run going in to
the fi nal period.
CJ McCollum’s 3-pointer
pushed the lead to 79-73 and
Portland held on until Mur-
ray’s 3 made it 83-all. Jokic’s
jumper gave Denver back the
lead before Whiteside’s tip.
“They had won 18 straight
openers here so to come in
here and win on the road
against a division rival to start
the year off I couldn’t ask for a
better start,” Malone said.
LA GRANDE — The Powder Valley Badgers rallied
from a 10-point fourth-quarter defi cit to pick up their
biggest win of the season, scoring the fi nal 22 points to
upset previously unbeaten Pilot Rock/Nixyaawii 48-36
on Thursday in a nonleague contest at Community
Stadium in La Grande.
“It was really fun,” head coach Josh Cobb said. “We
knew we could play with most people, and it fi nally
came together tonight.”
The Badgers fell behind 36-26 in the third quarter
when Rockets’ quarterback Tanner Corwin, who threw
for 324 yards and four touchdowns, hit on a 43-yard
scoring strike to Logan Weinke with 4:48 to play in the
third quarter.
But Powder Valley dominated the fi nal quarter.
Reece Dixon, who threw for 251 yards and four scores,
connected with Roper Bingham for an 85-yard touch-
down to make it a two-point game with 7:03 to play.
The duo hooked up again three minutes later — this
time on a 51-yard pass — for Powder Valley’s fi rst lead,
40-36, with four minutes to go.
“Once we decided that we were going to get our
heads up and play well (and) we got a few things roll-
ing it just kept going for us,” Bingham said.
Cobb said the team having matchups against
high-ranked teams in previous weeks benefi tted the
Badgers in the fourth.
“Three out of the last four weeks we’ve played
teams ranked in the top 10, and we had to play the
entire four quarters. We know how to play all the way
through the game,” he said.
Dixon, who also rushed for 250 yards and three
touchdowns, iced the game with 1:28 to play with an
80-yard run for the fi nal margin.
“We knew we had more talent than they did. We had
confi dence that we knew we could beat them and we
played well,” Bingham said.
The fi nish capped not only a 10-point fourth-quarter
comeback, but a rally from 14 points down after one
quarter for the Badgers. An 83-yard TD pass from Cor-
win to Tyasin Burns and a 9-yard Corwin to Weinke
TD gave the Rockets a 14-0 lead after one quarter.
The Badgers chipped away on the ground, with
touchdown runs of 5 and 81 yards by Dixon getting
Powder Valley going in the second quarter. He later
connected with Bingham for their fi rst TD of the game
— this one another big strike of 84 yards — to bring
the Badgers within 22-20 late in the second quarter.
The Badgers trailed at halftime, 28-20, but again got
within two, at 28-26, in the third quarter on a 17-yard
TD catch by Kaden Krieger.
Bingham fi nished with the three touchdown recep-
tions and 220 yards through the air. Clay Martin
added 83 yards rushing and Ethan Stephens had 47
yards on the ground. Stephens also intercepted Corwin
twice.
Weinke fi nished with 10 catches for 220 yards for
the Rockets.
WORLD SERIES GAME TWO
Nationals take 2-0 lead
By Kristie Rieken
AP Sports Writer
HOUSTON — Stephen Strasburg’s time
had come.
Famously held out of the postseason seven
years ago, Strasburg delivered on the biggest
stage of all Wednesday night.
The right-hander outpitched fellow ace
Justin Verlander, overcoming a shaky start
to help the Washington Nationals beat the
Houston Astros 12-3 for a commanding 2-0
lead in the World Series.
Strasburg went six innings to earn the win
— and a group hug in the dugout when he
was done on the mound.
Kurt Suzuki hit a tiebreaking homer in
what became a messy six-run seventh, and
the Nationals headed back home needing two
wins in three potential games in Washington
to claim their fi rst championship.
Adam Eaton paraded around the bases
pointing to the Houston crowd after a late
home run as the Nationals won their eighth
in a row.