The Jefferson City Jays aren't used to having a losing record.
With Friday night's 38-20 loss to St. Louis University High, the Jays are 2-3.
Jefferson City hasn't finished with more losses than wins since before Ted LePage became the coach in 2006. And winning games won't be easy the rest of the way with the combined record of the Jays' remaining opponents being 15-5.
"I'm more worried about us growing up a little bit," LePage said. " We need to look at some situations of what are we going to go with this. Do we need to make personnel changes? Do we need to make schematical changes? There's things that we need to look at of how to help our players win these games."
Jefferson City was outgained 512-269 on Friday against the Junior Bills, who are now 3-2 under first-year head coach Mike Jones.
"This is kind of like a playoff atmosphere, if you think about," said Jones, who coached the Lincoln Blue Tigers for six seasons. "They needed a win, we needed a win. My hat's off to coach LePage, he gets his guys ready to play. Our kids were ready to play today and we executed. We had too many penalties but we played well and we played hard and got the win."
It was the first time Jones had coached against his former Missouri Tigers teammate, and it came just a few hundred yards from his old stomping ground at Dwight T. Reed Stadium. But Jones downplayed the significance of coming back to Jefferson City, saying it wasn't a more significant win because of his Jefferson City connection.
"It's really not," he said. "It's a win. It's a big win because we're playing against a very good football team. It has nothing to do whether it's Jeff City and me coming back, it was a very good football team and we needed a challenge and we got it tonight and we stepped up to the challenge."
They did in a big way.
Up 21-14 at halftime, the Junior Bills slowly put the game out of reach.
On the opening drive of the second half, Daniel Terry got to the outside on a pitch and dragged Jays defenders with him down the sideline for a 35-yard gain.
SLUH ran it eight times for 73 yards on a drive that ended with a 22-yard field goal from Joseph Gilmore to make it 24-14 with 8:25 left in the third quarter. That's more rushing yards than the Jays have given up in two of their games this season.
"I was really surprised by that," LePage said of the rushing defense. "That's something that hasn't happened to us all year. That is one thing we really need to go back and look at on film."
SLUH ran it 45 times for 248 yards, led by Jared Scott's 176 yards on 25 attempts.
"We matched force with force," Jones said. "We're pretty good at running the ball. We've got a good running back, we've got a great offensive line and we want to establish the run and they did a good job and that allowed us to throw the ball."
Following the field goal, the Jays were forced into a punting situation. A high snap placed SLUH just 16 yards from the end zone, and the Junior Bills scored in four plays. Terry got to the edge for a 4-yard touchdown for a 31-14 lead with 5:05 left in the third quarter.
The Junior Bills' final score of the night was a 68-yard pass from Austin Hannah to Daniel McMurran, who got open in the middle of the field and out-ran the defense for the touchdown.
Hannah completed 14-of-18 passes for 264 yards and two touchdowns.
"We've got big play-players," Jones said. "We say when big play games come us, they need to make big plays and they did that today."
SLUH's largest lead was 38-14 with 8:42 left in the game after a 68-yard pass from Hannah to Daniel McMurran.
The Jays scored the final points of the game on their next drive on a 7-yard swing pass from Devin Roberson to Maleek Jackson, who had a 91-yard kickoff return touchdown in the first quarter.
The Jays' other first-half score tied the game at 14 with 7:06 left in the second quarter.
Jackson caught a swing pass from Roberson and ran it 21 yards to the end zone. Jackson ran it 22 times for 65 yards, while Roberson led the Jays with 77 yards on 19 attempts.
The Jays totaled 116 rushing yards, the lowest of the season.
"It's been tough for us here the last couple weeks because everybody is just piling it and that's why we need to get the pass game going," LePage said. "Maybe there was some confidence gained tonight because if we back them off, we started running the ball pretty openly there in the fourth quarter."
Roberson completed 12-of-21 passes for 153 yards with two touchdowns and an interception. All but two of those completions came in the second half.
"Definitely we can build on it," LePage said. "The only problem what I see with what it was is they were playing looser coverage. We had a couple we should have stuck in earlier that we didn't. This is still going to be a work in progress."
Next up for the Jays is a road game against Rock Bridge (4-1), which beat Hickman 41-9 on Friday.