As far as road trips go, the weekend journey to William Jewell definitely had its' ups and downs for a young Lindenwood football team.

The downs started late in the week, when it was learned that the LU defense would be without three of its' top players - sophomores Billy Ray Uren and Eric Heyde, along with junior Jeremy Coley - due to injuries. Then, on Friday, one of the Lions buses broke down on the way to the Kansas City area, so half the team didn't arrive at the hotel until after midnight, seven hours behind schedule.

The ups were mostly during the game itself, as the Lions went toe-to-toe with a physical Jewell team for four quarters, taking a 14-10 lead while controlling the Cardinal offense for most of the game. When Marcus Crawford's three-yd. TD run capped off a 12-play, 62-yd. drive to open the second half, the Lions appeared to be in control and on their way to a nicer trip home.

The score stayed that way throughout most of the second half, as neither team could sustain a drive on offense. The Lions punted the ball back to Jewell with little more than six minutes remaining, and with the Cardinals pinned at their own 10-yd. line - and with the LU defense having held the Benny Palmer-led Jewell offensive unit to less than 200 yards at that point - it seemed unlikely that lightning was about to strike.

That it did, though, on the first play, in the form of a 41-yd. pass play up the middle of the LU defense from Palmer to LeAndre Estes, which un-pinned the Cardinals and changed the complexion of the game.

"Obviously, the biggest play of the game was the long pass play when we had them ninety yards away with six minutes left," said Ross, whose career record now stands at 34-16. "You just can't give up a big chunk of yardage at that point in the game."

Jewell capitalized seven plays later, on third-and-11 from the Lion 23, when Palmer again came up big - this time on a strike to wideout Tyler Mills which was nearly broken up by LU corner Larry Gladney. Mills caught the ball after it popped up in the air after the collision, giving Jewell a 17-14 lead with 3:13 remaining in the game.

The Lions mounted a drive in the final moments which reached Cardinal territory, with sophomore quarterback Ben Kisner twice converting clutch fourth-down throws to junior Ricky Moore. The second of those play put the Lions at the Jewell 44 with just under a minute remaining, only a few yards short of field goal range for standout freshman Haley Farrell.

The storybook ending to the road trip was not to be though, as Jewell cornerback Ty Hawkins intercepted Kisner on the Cardinal three-yd. line on the next play, as the LU signal caller tried to get it all at once, looking for freshman Trevan Hombs down the right sideline.

"You have to like the way we battled back at the end, and after falling behind 10-0 in the second quarter," said Ross. "For a team like ours, which is very young to begin with, the adversity of the defensive injuries and the travel issues were learning situations - teaching kids how to handle adversity is one of the great things about this game. The perfect ending would have been a last-second score to win it, but it didn't happen that way for us."

The Lions moved the ball well on the ground at times against a veteran Cardinal defense, with junior tailback Hakeem Abdullah again leading the way with 127 yards on 19 carries, including a 55-yd. TD run in the second quarter, which made it 10-7 at the half.

Two hallmarks of a young team - inconsistency and mental errors - plagued the Lions, as they accumulated 15 penalties for 144 yards ... most of them coming in important down-and-distance situations, and most of them coming in the monumentally silly category.

Example: on LU's last play from scrimmage before the Palmer-to-Estes pass play in the fourth quarter, the Lions had converted a third-and-5 from their own 40 with a 22-yd. pass from Kisner to Abdullah. It was nullified, however, by a motion penalty, the Lions couldn't convert the third-and-10, and had to punt. Palmer, who shined for the Cardinals with 193 passing yards and a rushing TD, made them pay.

The Lions will be at home next weekend in Saint Charles, taking on Evangel at 1:30 pm in Lindenwood University Stadium.