skip navigation
- EXPIRED -

Sun stunned by Raiders, refs in playoff loss

By Kirk Penton-Kelowna Daily Courier, 10/18/17, 8:45AM PDT

Share

Rashaun Simonise collected the bouncing pigskin, took off to his right and got two massive blocks en route to a 72-yard punt return touchdown that, with a successful extra point, would have tied the Okanagan Sun’s BCFC semifinal against the Vancouver Island Raiders on Sunday afternoon.

There was only one problem. A penalty flag was lying next to Raiders punter Nic Hunchak on the Apple Bowl turf. Sun defensive back Conor Richard was flagged for contacting the kicker, giving the Raiders 10 yards and a first down with 54 seconds remaining in the game.

“I thought I tied it,” Simonise said, “but that’s all right. It happens. It’s part of the game.”

Okanagan still forced Vancouver Island to punt with 28 seconds remaining, but it was unable to move the ball 90 yards in the final 17 seconds. The Sun’s season came to an end with a 15-8 loss to the Raiders, who will meet the host Westshore Rebels in Saturday’s league championship match.

Sun head coach Ben Macauley didn’t mince words when asked about the penalty that wiped out Simonise’s heroics.

“(Hunchak) didn’t actually get touched by any of our players. It was his own player,” Macauley said. “And the ball came out funny, so that tells me the ball was hit. So we got a roughing the kicker on a play where our guy wasn’t even touching the kicker. So it was a bad call. They’ll see it on film, and we’ll see it, too. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It was a very important call, and he didn’t have to make it, and he did.”

Considering how well the return was set up, Richard probably shouldn’t have been anywhere near Hunchak in the first place. Then again, the Sun probably had no business being in a position to tie the game at that point anyway. No BCFC team scored more points during the regular season than Okanagan, which averaged 34.1 per contest, but through three quarters on Sunday afternoon it had produced one point.

Starting quarterback Keith Zyla completed 19 of 35 attempts for 230 yards, but his four interceptions were too much to overcome. Zyla was finally healthy after dealing with two significant injuries during the regular season, but his backup, Nick Wenman, missed Sunday’s game due to a concussion. It didn’t sound like Macauley ever thought about making a quarterback change.

 

“We had one option, but Keith’s a leader, and you could see as he played in the fourth quarter that that’s why we love him and why we have faith in him,” Macauley said. “Very few people can throw four interceptions and then come down and do everything except come back and win the game. He put his guys in the right position at the end there. The problem was, it was just in the fourth quarter. We needed four quarters of that, and we didn’t get it. But for a guy who hasn’t played a whole lot this year, he sure came in and did a great job finishing.”

Okanagan’s defence can feel somewhat good about itself, as Vancouver Island made eight trips inside the Sun’s 40-yard line but managed just eight points during those drives.

Richard, a linebacker, scored Okanagan’s only touchdown on a one-yard plunge with 6:30 left in the fourth that got the Sun within a touchdown, and it looked like the Raiders were going to go two-and-out on their next drive. The Sun’s momentum got zapped, however, when Hunchak pulled the ball down instead of punting, ran to his left and found Brannon McDougall for a 43-yard completion.

Okanagan, which finished second in the BCFC with an 8-1-1 record, will graduate 11 players, but Macauley believes his team will be a contender again next season.

“A lot of these playmakers that we talk about every week are young guys that we expect to have back,” he said. “We’ve gotta do a better job of supporting them, getting them prepared to play in big games, because clearly they weren’t ready to play for the first three quarters today.”