Mustangs fall in Shelby

The Malta Mustangs fell to turnovers and a pretty potent passing game from the Shelby Coyotes in Shelby last Friday, September 8, as the team looks to face a Conrad Cowboys team hungry for their first win at Mustang Field on Friday, September 15.

The Cowboys will come into Malta, after losing their first two games to Cut Bank (33-20) and Lincoln County (52-13). Though Conrad is without a win this season, Coach Jim Benn and the Mustangs have no intention of overlooking their opponent.

"They are a spread offense," Coach Benn said. "They are going to be very aggressive with their backs in their eight man front on defense."

Having that safety in the box could give the Cowboys a slight advantage over Malta's option heavy offense. Coach Benn expects a tightly contested game this Friday.

"It's a good contest against a good team that's solid on their blocks," Coach Benn said. "They just lost a close one with Cut Bank. With these Northern B teams, there will be tight games all the way across the board."

Facing Conrad's spread offense, Coach Benn and the team has been looking to tighten things up in the defensive secondary this week during practices.

"We are going to try to button up our pass coverage a little bit," Coach Benn said. "We are going to obviously work on ball security and location or where we are going to throw the ball and all those little things so hopefully we can pull out a win this week."

A lot of those issues came up last week in the team's 37-22 loss to Shelby last Friday.

Shelby's Aaron White threw for 405 yards and three touchdowns and ran for one more that night.

The Mustangs run game continued where it left off with their first game against Roundup, as Malta gashed Shelby for 299 yards on 53 carries.

Quarterback Trace Simonson ran for 149 yards and two touchdowns on 23 carries (6.48 YPC). Running back Trey Simanton ran for 111 yards and a touchdown on 16 carries (6.94 YPC). Andres Lopez and Kevin Henry both had 14 yards a piece and Tanner Smith added 11 yards.

Simonson was 11-for-23 for 145 yards passing, with four interceptions thrown.

"We had too many mistakes and put ourselves in bad situations," Coach Benn said. "We didn't take care of the ball very well and defensively we struggle with their passing game. We put them in good situations and they had good field position."

Though the team lost their last game, Coach Benn knows that his team is still in good spirits.

"I feel like we're in a positive mind-frame," Coach Benn said. "That was a good team that made some noise in the playoffs last year and White is definitely a college level quarterback and we got better because we have seen that and now we can kind of adjust a few things."