The ECS Elecs showed us two different teams in Saturday's high school football game against the Vanier Vikings.
The Elecs struggled for most of the game before exploding offensively in the last few minutes of the fourth quarter.
Quarterback Kolby Fleury and the rest of the offence needed only three minutes to score more points than they had in any previous game this season.
For three minutes, that looked like an offence that could put up enough points to beat anybody. And the defence helped out by keeping the Vikings in check.
It's the other 45 minutes of the game that the Elecs need to work on.
In their previous game, ECS came out on fire against the undefeated Central Cyclones and had the lead at the half, only to struggle in the second.
Granted, they were playing a very good team that no one expected them to beat, but it's another example of the Jekyll-and-Hyde nature of this year's club.
The Elecs have shown flashes of brilliance that make you believe they can be a very good football team. They need to bottle that up and show it consistently.
But there were reasons why the Elecs were in a 32-1 hole entering the late stages on Saturday to begin with.
The biggest one was a failure to execute.
Although the receiving corps was on fire in the fourth quarter, it struggled earlier in the game with several key drops. That was a major contributor to Fleury's 13-of-35 completion rate.
There were also some painfully bad missed tackles, particularly in the first half, where the Vanier ball carrier had nowhere to go but wasn't wrapped up.
After a 2-4 season last year, the winless Elecs have taken a step back, despite improving in some areas. Luckily for them, everyone makes the playoffs and they still have a chance to find their game.
***
Well, it didn't take long for my fearless SJHL predictions to look dumb.
Keep in mind, it's very, very early in the game, a fact that some fans might need to be reminded of, but who would have expected the Bruins to be last in the south and the Kindersley Klippers to be in first place?
The Klippers haven't exactly had an easy schedule either, beating Battlefords, Humboldt and Melville so far.
Meanwhile, the Flin Flon Bombers have shown exactly why so many people pegged them as a Canalta Cup favourite.
The Bombers are 4-0, with a terrifying 23 goals over that stretch. They have allowed only nine.
Speaking of the Klippers, if you want a laugh, head to their website at klippershockey.com, where you can see a picture of Peter Forsberg in a Klippers uniform.
That's one of several SJHL team websites that has been relaunched, along with the main league site, and the rest of the newly designed sites will go public soon.
This is long overdue. The designs on the old websites were stale and outdated, and a lot of the functions and widgets on the team pages simply didn't work.
But in order for the change to really have an impact, the SJHL website needs to be better updated. For that to happen, the league needs to hire a full-time web administrator, something that it has so far refused to do.
***
Well, I'm ashamed to say that I missed the finish at the Ryder Cup on Sunday due to work commitments, but I watched a good chunk of the action earlier in the day and kept up to the minute as Martin Kaymer sank the putt that signalled victory for Europe.
It's an absolutely incredible comeback when you think about it.
It was almost a foregone conclusion heading into Sunday's singles matches that the U.S., with a four-point lead, would steal the Cup back from Europe.
That was before Rory McIlroy got his time zones mixed up and needed a police escort to make his tee time by about 10 minutes.
And he still managed to hand Keegan Bradley his first loss of the tournament. That knocked some early wind out of the U.S. side.
Justin Rose, who only the night before needed to do some putting on the carpet of his hotel room to bring his confidence up, somehow one-putted the last three holes to put away Phil Mickelson.
One of the hottest players on tour, Brandt Snedeker, lost to Paul friggin Lawrie.
And if there were a Ryder Cup Hall of Fame, Ian Poulter certainly secured his entry to it with a victory over Webb Simpson that pushed him to 12-3 all-time at the tournament.
The Europeans had an unshakeable belief that they could come all the way back. When it was all over, almost to a man, they spoke about their inspiration: the late Seve Ballesteros, a former Ryder Cup star who passed away last year and was a close friend of Europe captain Jose Maria Olazabal.
Seve would be proud.
Josh Lewis can be reached by phone at 634-2654, by e-mail at sports@estevanmercury.ca, on Twitter at twitter.com/joshlewis306 or on his Bruins blog at estevanmercury.ca/bruinsbanter. Is it possible for Calgary MP Rob Anders to be deported?
