Olivia Dobbs is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Desert Mountain High School for AZPreps365.com.

Numerous interceptions, a lack of energy, and a complacent mindset played pivotal roles in the  Desert Mountain Wolves' defeat to the Horizon Huskies on Friday night.

What was anticipated as the game of the week turned into a comfortable win for the Huskies. Last season, these two teams faced off in an exciting matchup, with the Wolves barely coming out on top 24-22. This season, they aimed to repeat that success. However, the Wolves struggled on offense, and the Huskies secured a win 21-10.   

The game started off as a defensive battle leaving both teams scoreless heading into the second quarter. Late in the second quarter, Huskies quarterback Jase Ashley broke the deadlock with a 22-yard rushing touchdown, shifting the momentum in their favor. With under a minute left in the half, Ashley connected with tight end Jax Markovich for a 19-yard touchdown, adding seven more points to their lead. 

Heading into the second half down 14-0 the Wolves had to bring the energy and ultimately fell short. Senior captain Lucas Blumling for the Wolves knows his team had more to give and will take the lesson they learned from this game and turn it into motivation.

“We just need to get better as a whole, I personally failed our team in certain aspects. I didn’t do my job. I think we have been getting a little cocky and today showed us there is stuff we need to do better, so we gotta get better,” said Blumling. 

The Huskies’ offense proved unstoppable. Quarterback Jase Ashley led his team to victory, dominating the game with both his passing and rushing abilities, causing many challenges for the Wolves defense. Ashley recorded one rushing touchdown and two passing touchdowns to aid the Huskies to a big win. 

Desert Mountain Head Coach Conrad Hamilton expressed deep disappointment in his team's performance, to put it mildly. “We didn’t deserve to win tonight. Gotta give them credit they out-coached us, they outplayed us and we just dropped the ball in certain aspects. Defensively I am disappointed how we played on third down. It's very uncharacteristic of us. We gave up two touchdowns on some bull crap execution on defense,” said Hamilton. 

The Wolves struggled on both sides of the ball, making mistakes very uncommon for such a solid team. On defensive, they could not execute simple things and on offense, they were nowhere to be found. Wolves quarterback Bryce Herges struggled in the game, throwing three interceptions. 

Going into practice tomorrow the Wolves are looking to take this as a lesson and continue to get after it. There is still a lot of football left to play and the little things need to get fixed if the Wolves want to make a run in the playoffs. 

“We have to make a comeback and be able to recover from this because we still have a lot of games left and playoffs, so this is a blessing in disguise and I think it will wake up our team a little bit. Make them work a little bit harder,” said Blumling.