A stingy Tooele defense shut down visiting Mountain View in the second half, unfortunately the Buffaloes weren't able to overcome the 14 points put up in the first half in a 14-7 loss.

Zac Clausing ran the ball hard with 105 yards and Tooele's lone touchdown on nine carries. While Trifon Gochis added 49 yards of his own on the ground.

Mountain View seemed to confuse the Tooele defense by putting Marcus Draper in motion to begin the game and running a big 16-yard sweep play that kept the drive alive for the Bruins. From there big TJ Mounga powered his way across the goal line for the game's first score.

Mountain View's defensive line did a great job causing havoc in the normally potent Tooele running game as they forced the Buffaloes to go three plays and out on two of their first three possessions.

Early in the second quarter punter Nic Gochis had a snap fly over his head which gave the Bruins great field position.

From there Mounga again ran two long runs of 11 and the scoring run from 13 yards out to go ahead 14-0.

Tooele didn't hang their heads for long as Clausing took the ball on the second play of the ensuing drive for a 73-yard touchdown run to cut the deficit in half 14-7.

The defense for Tooele really stepped up after that as LauLea Halai was able to bust through the line on third down to sack Mountain View quarterback Mark Garrett to stuff a drive.

Midway through the third quarter Tooele put together a decent drive with Trifon Gochis at the helm. Gochis ran a huge 15-yard run on third down to keep the driving going. Nic Gochis also picked up a run for 10 yards as Tooele got down to Mountain View's 20 yard line.

It was all for naught as a costly holding penalty and two straight incomplete passes doomed the promising drive for the Buffaloes.

In the fourth quarter Tooele punted the ball away to Mountain View with only three minutes left and the chances looked slim that the Buffaloes would see the ball again before the final horn.

But Tooele caught a lucky break as Bruin running back Draper got hit hard causing the ball to fly straight up in the air into the waiting arms of Jimmy Searle to give the Buffs one last chance.

A costly interception by Trifon Gochis unfortunately sealed the game for the visiting Bruins.

"We tried changing things up a little bit on them (Mountain View) by playing Chase Banks at quarterback," said Tooele coach Sam Elliot. "It didn't work all that well and we'll probably go back to Trifon taking most of the snaps."

All in all Tooele played tough defense, shutting down the Bruins in the second half but the offense couldn't ever get started against the tough defensive front of Mountain View.

Tooele 2-2 (0-1) will now host Springville 0-4 (0-10) this Friday at 7 p.m.

Jake Gordon: jgordon@tooeletranscript.com