Scott Radley: McMaster Marauders lose, 27-24, to Windsor — first loss to Lancers in 25 years

The Readers Digest version of the story is that McMaster lost to Windsor 27-24 in overtime on Saturday.

That is shock enough. Mac never loses to Windsor.

But, you're going to have to wrack your brain to recall a more jaw-dropping ending to a Marauders' football game than one in which two controversial penalties in that overtime took Mac from being on the precipice of a victory to driving home empty handed.

After McMaster kicked a field goal to take the lead in the extra frame, the Lancers needed to do at least as much or the game would be over. Facing a second-and-11 at the McMaster 36 yard line, which is about the limit of their kicker's range in swirling winds, one more strong defensive play and the Marauders likely win.

The Marauders sent pressure on the next play and penalty flags flew.

We were blitzing and the left guard and left tackle both jumped," head coach Stef Ptaszek says.

Game video seem to suggest he's correct. However, the officials didn't see it that way and instead penalized Mac for being offside.

Already steaming at having a player ejected earlier and for being on the wrong end of a huge penalty disparity, the McMaster sideline was livid.

That's a big penalty," the coach says. And that is our 17th penalty of the game versus seven for them. And so our bench is a little frustrated."

More than a little.

Before the next play can be run, some words on the sideline led to another flag being thrown, this one for unsportsmanlike conduct. Ptaszek says he doesn't know who said it or what was said. Regardless, instead of being second-and-16 from a mile away, it's now first-and-10 from the 21-yard line.

One play later it was in the end zone and Windsor had won.

It was a stunning way to lose. Especially since the Marauders had won 19 in a row against the Lancers - many of them blowouts - going back to 1996.

While the overtime will be the headline, the truth is that the visitors should never have put themselves in the position to be there.

The offence collected 510 yards compared to Windsor's 275 - running back Justice Allin was terrific picking up 152 on the ground - but translating that yardage into points was a struggle. It didn't help that quarterback Andreas Dueck threw an uncharacteristic three interceptions in the first half alone.

Mac also missed two field goals and took an unnecessary roughness penalty on the second-last play of the first half that backed them up out of field goal range.

We did what every bad football team does," Ptaszek says. Turn the ball over, we took penalties at stupid, critical times, we shot ourselves in the foot."

Put it all together and this team is just impossible to read right now. After looking so good last weekend in a tilted-field victory over previously unbeaten Waterloo - after looking so bad against Western the game before - who knows what to expect from this squad?

Getting sorted out has become rather urgent, though. With the schedule shortened to six games because of COVID-19, a loss next week at home to Laurier would drop them to 1-3 and in danger of missing the playoffs. So, Ptaszek says they're already in playoff mode.

In the meantime, he says they can't be concentrating on calls not going their way.

There's about 100 things that are in our control that we need to do way before we even consider worrying about that."

Scott Radley is a Hamilton-based columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sradley@thespec.com