Sometimes you can sense a season starting to slip away.  For the LBCC Vikings football team, that time is right now.  Going into Saturday’s game against the Palomar Comets, they were 3-3, and 0-2 in conference play, with just four games left to turn things around.  After a hard 20-7 loss, they’re now 3-4, and 0-3 in conference.  Winning out would only bring them to 3-3 in the Southern Conference, and might not even qualify them for postseason play.

The game started well enough, with the Vikes getting on the board first, with a 65-yard Josh Powell touchdown pass to his favorite target Stephen Burton a little more than a minute into the game.  After that pass (the result of a Comets blown coverage), the defenses took over, and the first half ended with LBCC up 7-3.  Then, in the third quarter, the Vikes had strung together a great drive, inching all the way down to the Comets’ goal line, where they found themselves in a 4^th-and-goal just a few inches from taking a decisive lead.  Instead, the Comets stopped them, and proceeded to march 99 yards in 17 plays to score, going up 10-7, and never relinquishing the lead.

As usual, there were bright spots for LBCC, as Powell threw for 200 yards, and Travell Washington had 71 yards on 9 carries.  In the end, though, football is a game of inches, and the Vikings lost the battle for the goal line, then had to watch the Comets march downfield and take the game away from them.  The game is won or lost on inches, and sometimes, seasons hang on them.