Poplar Bluff falls in regular-season finale to Hillsboro

While the Poplar Bluff Mules tried to go toe-to-toe with the Hillsboro Hawks on Friday night at Mules Stadium, it was the visiting team that landed big plays in the first half to hand the Mules a 56-25 loss on Senior Night.

The loss puts the Mules at 5-4 during the regular season and with two more games on the schedule for Saturday, Poplar Bluff’s fate won’t be completely sealed until those games end.

But, if things shake out as predicted, the Mules will have a bye for the first round of the playoffs. Poplar Bluff would take on the winner of Farmington and Webster Groves on Nov. 3 at Mules Stadium.

Before Poplar Bluff ever worries about the playoffs, they still had to get through Friday night, which proved difficult against the high-powered offense of the Hawks.

“We knew this was a really good team,” Mules head coach Dave Sievers said. “If we could matched them score for score for a little while but that’s a dang good football team. That may be the best team we’ve seen this year. They’re physical and they through the ball a lot better tonight than we expected them too.”

Hillsboro came in with a balanced rushing attack but aired it out during the first half for multiple touchdowns, including scores of 22 yards, 45 yards, 60 yards and 63 yards, while also capitalizing from inside the five-yard line as well.

The Mules trailed 27-7 after one despite answering with a big play of their own after the Hawks’ opened the game with one.

With 7:24 left in the first, junior quarterback Jay Edmundson found a streaking Darius Graham for the 45-yard score.

Poplar Bluff found the end zone again with 11:11 left in the second quarter when Edmundson hit Hunter Clifford for a 52-yard touchdown but they trailed the Hawks 27-13.

With Hillsboro having the game in hand up 42-13 with 6:26 left in the third, Edmundson punched it in from a couple of yards out for his first rushing score of the game.

As the clock ran late in the fourth quarter, Avery Persons found daylight up the gut from 12 yards out to make the score 56-25, the games eventual final.

Sievers gave his kudos to the team in blue after the game.

“If they’re the No. 3 team in the state in Class 4, I would hate to try and match up against one and two,” he said. “Then you look at Cardinal Ritter and what they did to them, it makes you realize how scary Cardinal Ritter must be.”

Sievers said they’ll attack Saturday as usual and watch film of Friday’s game before looking at the next steps.

“We probably take a couple of days off after school, lift int he morning,” he said. “Spend a week working on fundamentals. We’ll probably have a decent idea of who we’re going to play so we’ll look at the brackets and start getting ready for them. We’ve got some kids that are a little bit banged up. We played hard but this is a good football team.”