MOSAIC PLACE RECAP: LIONS 35 RIDERS 32 (OT)

Travis Lulay threw a four-yard touchdown to Manny Arceneaux in overtime Friday as the Lions picked up their first win of the season with a wild 35-32 comeback victory over the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

“I’m just proud of my guys,” said Lulay, who finished 34 of 44 for 404 yards and three touchdowns. “Phenomenal effort to overcome a bit of a slow start.”

The Lions (1-1) trailed 29-18 late in the fourth quarter before Lulay hooked up with Austin Collie for a 46-yard touchdown plus a two-point convert with 1:38 to play.

Trailing 29-26, B.C. elected to kick deep and got the ball back after stuffing Saskatchewan on third-and-short near midfield.

Lions rookie kicker Richie Leone then stepped up a few plays later and hit his fifth field goal of the night, a club-record boot of 56 yards, with 15 seconds left on the clock to send the game to overtime.

Former B.C. kicker Paul McCallum, who was cut in training camp, nailed a 33-yard field goal to put Saskatchewan (0-3) up 32-29 in OT before Lulay hooked up with Arceneaux for the clinching points.

“It’s a big win for us,” said first-year Lions head coach Jeff Tedford, who picked up his first CFL victory. “I know it’s only one and it’s early, but to be able to come back like that says a lot about our team.”

The Lions stumbled in the red zone in a 27-16 road loss to the Ottawa Redblacks to open their season last week and that was the case until the fourth quarter against the Roughriders.

“You could tell it was weighing on the group a little bit,” said Lulay. “For us to get over that hump and open up the gate a little bit … it gives us confidence.”

Weston Dressler caught two touchdowns for Saskatchewan, which has lost back-to-back games in overtime and will host the Lions in the rematch next Friday.

Kevin Glenn made his second straight start for the Roughriders after No. 1 quarterback Darian Durant ruptured his left Achillies tendon in Saskatchewan’s opener and wound up 23 of 29 for 271 yards to go along with two touchdowns and an interception.

Anthony Allen and short-yardage QB Brett Smith accounted for the Roughriders’ other TDs.

Lulay, who also had a touchdown toss to Rollie Lumbala, made his first start at B.C. Place Stadium since September 2013 following two seasons marred by injuries to his throwing shoulder.

“It’s important for us to play well at home and defend our turf. It doesn’t matter how you do it,” said Lulay. “You could sense how important the win was for the guys once we started to give ourselves a little bit of life.”

With the Roughriders down 9-7 in the third quarter after Leone connected on a 12-yard field goal, Dressler caught his second TD on a 10-yard pass from Glenn. Saskatchewan went for two, with Dressler hauling in another Glenn pass to go up 15-9.

The Lions responded with a 42-yard field goal from Leone, but Glenn – who started all but one game for the Lions last season with Lulay out injured – drove the Roughriders down to the Lions’ one-yard line before Smith rushed for a short TD early in the fourth.

McCallum added his second 32-yard convert of the night to put Saskatchewan up 22-12.

B.C. scored its first TD with under seven minutes to go on a seven-yard pass from Lulay to Lumbala, but Leone missed the convert to keep the Roughriders up by four.

Saskatchewan then looked to have salted things away when Glenn drove the ball down the field again to set up Allen’s 10-yard TD run that made it 29-18 after McCallum’s convert with just over two minutes to play.

But the Lions didn’t quit, as Lulay hooked up with Collie before Leone sent the game to OT.

“We wanted this one bad,” said Lulay. “You could feel that and I could sense that. When Richie knocked down the kick we felt really confident going into overtime. I certainly did. I could feel that from the group.”

POSTGAME COMMENTS

HEAD COACH COREY CHAMBLIN

– Right now our season is coming down to inches.  We get that third down, that’s one part of it and we’re celebrating right now.  T-Brack was inches from an interception.  We’re so close.  We just have to continue to push.

– We gotta find a way.  Everybody else is.  Last week I called more man and we got penalties.  Penalties move the field.  Clean football is what we have to play.  We call three-, four-, five-man rush, we just have to find a way to get off the field.

– Like anything else, we got caught at the end and they scored.  If we make those tackles, we win that game.  Everything is close right now with this football team.

– That’s the deal.  We’ve won 58 minutes of football two weeks in a row but we have to close the deal.  We need 60 minutes of luck, not 58 minutes of luck.

LB JEFF KNOX

– That’s a tough one alright.  I want to win so bad.  Our vets are gonna bring us back up.  We’ll come out swinging next week.

– It’s a good thing (facing BC on Friday).  We know them.  They know us.  We’ll be ready.

– Penalties can’t affect us.  We’re a football team.  We’re a good football team.  That don’t matter to us at all.

SB WESTON DRESSLER

– That’s a good question.  Going down the stretch we felt good about the position we were in.  They found a way to make a few more plays than us in the end.

– We’re doing some good things on offense.  There’s things to improve but we’re moving the ball and we scored more touchdowns this week rather than field goals which is a good sign.  But we need to find a way to score one more point than them or score a touchdown first in overtime and put the pressure on them.

– I think the biggest thing right now for us is recognizing the pain.  It should hurt.  We should have guys in the locker room that care about winning football games.  I’d be worried if guys weren’t quiet in there and weren’t hurting.  We have guys that care.

– We’re right there and we gotta keep that in our mind.  We can’t give up on ourselves and we’re not going to.  We just have to find a way to win games.

– We just gotta clean it up as players.  We know the rules.  We’re three games in.  As players, we have to sharpen up and hone our skills better and stay out of the positions that take penalties.

– We’re already looking forward to next week now, learn from this film, and move on.