LAKE OSWEGO – With rival Lakeridge breathing down their necks in the fourth quarter Friday night, the No. 1 Lake Oswego Lakers had the ultimate answer.
Clinging to a three-point lead after back-to-back Lakeridge touchdowns, Lake Oswego turned to junior star running back LaMarcus Bell, who once again delivered in the clutch.
The 5-foot-11, 190-pound Bell carried eight times for 61 yards on the clinching drive -- including a six-yard touchdown – as the Lakers turned back the No. 5 Pacers 28-18 in the regular-season finale to put the final touches on an outright Three Rivers League football title.
“He's just a workhorse,” Lake Oswego coach Steve Coury said of Bell, known to his teammates as Bam. “He's such a hard runner. He's the guy you want at the end of a game like this when you have to eat the clock up.”
Bell rushed for 167 yards and two touchdowns on 29 carries, accounting for the bulk of his team's 248 total yards. His final yards were directly attributed to his offensive line, which pushed him into the end zone in a wild scrum after he initially was stopped at the two-yard line.
“I think my linemen picked me up,” Bell said. “I looked and I go, 'I'm in the end zone.' It was crazy. That's just my line. My line is amazing. They do everything for me.”
Lake Oswego (9-0, 5-0) not only regained bragging rights in the Battle for the Lake for the first time since 2021, but it foiled Lakeridge's bid to force a three-way tie for first place. If the Pacers had won, Lakeridge (7-2, 3-2) and West Linn (8-1, 4-1) would have shared the league title with the Lakers.
“We wanted that outright,” Lake Oswego senior receiver Liam Davis said. “We did not want to have to share that league title. That was kind of the thing we uttered to ourselves all week in practice. And to have it be against Lakeridge, to be able to seize that opportunity, it's even more special.”
The win helped ease the sting of losing to Lakeridge 27-7 last year and 14-9 in 2022. Before that, the Lakers had won nine in a row against Lakeridge, including a 2019 playoff game.
“It feels so great, but the job's not finished,” senior defensive lineman Oliver Macy said. “We still have more games to play.”
Three years ago, the Lakers shared the league title with West Linn and Tualatin. Their last outright league title was in 2018, when they won their second state championship. The last time they went undefeated in the regular season was 2011, the year of their first state championship.
“We had a chance to repeat that, and we got it done,” Bell said of going undefeated.
Running the table in the tough Three Rivers is no small feat, Coury pointed out.
“If you would've said at the start of the year that someone in the Three Rivers League is going to go undefeated, I would've told you you're nuts,” Coury said. “And here we are.”
The Lakers took a 7-0 lead on their first offensive play when junior quarterback Hudson Kurland lofted a 65-yard touchdown pass to senior Carson Schwindt. Lakeridge senior Adam Farrell booted a 38-yard field goal to make it 7-3 in the second quarter.
Lake Oswego extended the lead to 14-3 late in the second quarter when Kurland threw a five-yard touchdown pass to sophomore Ethan Uecker on fourth-and-two. The score came after Macy recovered a Lakeridge fumble at the Pacers' 35-yard line.
The Lakers appeared to be in total command after marching 80 yards to take a 21-3 lead on the first series of the second half, capping it with a four-yard touchdown run by Bell.
But Lakeridge answered with touchdown drives of 80 and 91 yards. Junior Ansu Sanoe scored on a three-yard run late in the third quarter to make it 21-10. Junior Drew Weiler threw an eight-yard touchdown pass to senior Zyon Floyd, then passed to junior Jaden Tregesser for a two-point conversion, cutting the lead to 21-18 with 7:42 left in the game.
That's when the Lakers turned to Bell, who ran with the same determination he showed on a winning touchdown drive at then-No. 1 West Linn two weeks earlier.
“You can't go wrong giving it to LaMarcus,” Davis said. “He's an unreal player, and he's an unreal kid, too. To have a guy like that on your team, it means the world.”
Lake Oswego heads into the 6A Open bracket surging with confidence.
“We've just got to keep doing what we're doing,” Bell said. “It's hard to beat a team twice, and we'll see some of these teams in the playoffs. So we've got to go into games with an open mind, knowing it's hard to beat a team twice.”
Davis likes the Lakers' chances.
“I think we've got the composition, for sure,” Davis said. “We're a confident bunch. I wouldn't say we're cocky.”
Lakeridge outgained the Lakers, amassing 364 total yards. Weiler completed 21 of 26 passes for 254 yards and ran for 43 yards on eight carries. Tragesser had six catches for 102 yards and Floyd had eight catches for 81 yards and one touchdown.
Much like in a 13-0 loss to West Linn on Oct. 11, the Pacers were left lamenting their mistakes and missed opportunities. They were defeated, but they remain steadfast in their belief.
“I just shows that we can play with anyone,” Tragesser said. “We hung with West Linn the entire game. Those are two of the top three teams in the state. To take away a positive, it's a confidence booster. We know we can hang with anybody. One or two more plays go our way in that game, and we're winning that game.”
Added Floyd: “The reasons why we lost is because of just minor mistakes, mental mistakes. We can't make those in the playoffs, so we're going to work on those, for sure.”
jerryu@osaa.org
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