The University of Regina Rams were denied their first ever seven-win season and will finish second in Canada West football after a stunning meltdown in the final two minutes of a loss to the UBC Thunderbirds Friday afternoon.
Leading 28-13 in the final two minutes, the Rams would cough up a two touchdown drives sandwiched around an onside kick to allow the T-Birds to use a two-point convert to the tie the game in the final seconds. Then in overtime, a missed Ty Gorniak 35-yard Ram field goal try that resulted in a rouge was bested by an Alex Hillyard 33-yard field goal Thunderbird field goal to seal a 31-29 UBC win at Regina’s Leibel Field.
Fourth year defensive lineman Antony Montas Leipert thinks he and his teammates just didn’t adjust to what the Birds threw at them late in the game.
“I think we just let a couple of plays get away from us,” Montas Leipert said. “At halftime, they adjusted to our defence and it paid off in the long run for them. With our pass rush, we’ve just got to get home and we got a lot of chances but we just need to get there.”
U-of-R safety Carson Sombach enjoyed a pick-six in a blowout win at the same venue Leibel earlier this season but it wasn’t so joyful this time around. He thinks they took their foot off the gas too early.
“I just think we started playing too passive and they deke and dunked us all the way to the end zone a couple of times,” Sombach said. “Then the onside kick kind of turned the momentum and it’s just tough all around. But just grow from it, watch film, get better and come back better in the playoffs.”
A dramatic finish of epic proportion, that flipped the script on a Ram team that won a regular season finale much in the same fashion one year ago almost to the day. The loss means Regina will host the Manitoba Bisons in next weeks 2-3 playoff game at Mosaic Stadium on November 1st.
Ram head coach Mark McConkey was disappointed by the finish and suggested his team needs to respond better to adversity than they did to giving up the late onside kick.
“We’ve been in those situation’s before,” McConkey said. “We just didn’t do a good job with responding or not flinching and just relaxing. I think we kind of got a little too caught up in the moment and it definitely did take the air out of our sails.”
“We’ll learn from this and we’ve got to move on pretty quickly.”
The loss marked the first home start for quarterback Owen Sieben in two years, going 26-of-33 passing for 238 yards, two touchdowns and an interception. A second quarter touchdown pass to Rylan Sokul broke a streak of no passing touchdowns to anyone not named Marshall Erichsen at 16 quarters. Coach McConkey liked what he saw out of his quarterback, now two starts in back running the Rams offence.
“I thought he played great. He used his feet well and made some nice throws,” McConkey said. “Obviously there’s some that we were going to want back, but overall, I thought he played well and he did a good job for us and we’re happy where he’s at.”
The Regina coaching staff appears to have got Sieben cranked up for the playoffs and receiver Blake Laidlaw made his way back Friday after missing several games with injury. But they have some new problems with injuries on both sides of the ball to contend with as well with slotback Renzel Arinaza injuring what appeared to be his knee on after making a big catch on the games opening drive. Others like pass-rusher Toryn Swysten-Bernes had to leave the field late as well and the Rams were using Marshall Erichsen later than expected, leading to questions about the status of their other running back Christian Katende.
McConkey says his team suffered “a lot of injuries” and that it will probably be a different looking lineup in next week’s playoff game versus the Bisons.
Erichsen added another 88 yards to his Canada West rushing lead, bring his end-of-season total to 1,026 yards to break Adrian Charles single season school record and become the first ever U-of-R Ram to rush for over 1,000 yards.
The Canada West semifinal will be heard live on 620 CKRM. It will be the Rams first home playoff game since 2022.
