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Henry Burris, Kevin Glenn duel a bust

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HAMILTON

Neither Henry Burris nor Kevin Glenn will put this game in their personal scrapbooks.

This was supposed to be a shootout between the two quarterbacks who switched teams in the off-season.

As it is, they took turns shooting themselves in the foot on a rainy night at Ivor Wynne that ended with the Stampeders handing Burris and the Ticats a 31-20 defeat.

“I got too involved in the game emotionally early on. You know I was going to be pumped up, but I got to throw better balls than that,” said Burris, who completed 21 of 40 passes for 267 yards and one interception. “I was throwing the ball all over the place and forced the one that got picked off. I have to maintain my composure.”

Calgary ended Hamilton’s win streak at three.

There was nothing pretty about this affair. It was a game plagued by a rain — the wet kind, and a red one as officials threw 24 penalty flags.

Hamilton has given up more yards rushing than any other team, and in the fourth quarter Calgary began to exploit the ground game.

Jon Cornish had 170 yards on 19 carries. Protecting an 11-point lead, the Stamps ran down the clock with a punishing ground game led by Cornish that took 5:17 off the clock.

That ended dismally when Cornish fumbled at the Hamilton three. It was that kind of night. But, by then, there was no way back for the Ticats.

“They wanted it more. That’s how they played. It was like we just rolled over and gave it to them,” Burris said. “But this is a learning experience for a team that is young and learning to be consistent. We definitely didn’t play that way tonight, especially on offence.”

A pass interference call set the Stamps up at Hamilton’s eight yard line and when Glenn hit Nik Lewis with a TD pass it left Hamilton looking at a 31-20 deficit with 7:34 to play. Romby Bryant had taken an end-around two minutes into the fourth quarter to paydirt to give Calgary at 24-20 lead.

It had seemed Burris and Co. were heating up when they went 60 yards on Hamilton’s opening drive of the second half, including a nice 28-yard completion to Andy Fantuz. But a misread between Dave Stala and Burris resulted in a pass falling to the ground in the end zone — Stala looked back in puzzlement; Burris gesticulated in frustration. That ended with Hamilton taking a 13-10 lead on a Luca Conti field goal but it could’ve been so much better.

Worse, Fantuz ended up leaving after taking a shot to the head. Said Burris: “All I know is we came out and sputtered and didn’t get a lot going.

“When we had chances to get something going in the second half we didn’t cease the opportunities. They did a great job getting us off the field only giving us three points where we needed to get seven.”

If Burris was disappointed with his passing game, the ground game wasn’t much better with just 84 yards rushing.

Glenn, the former Ticats’ starter, came into the game with the league’s highest pass completion percentage (70.3%), but completed just 15 of 28 for 141 yards against a Hamilton defence that had allowed the third-most passing yards per game in the CFL.

As offensive juggernauts these guys spent a soggy first quarter going nowhere.

Neither team scored.

The initial first down didn’t come until seven minutes into the game when Glenn connected on a 13-yard pass to Nik Lewis.

The crowd snored.

As the minutes ticked away it was looking like the always exciting single point might decide this as the rain, the defences, penalty flags and general ineptitude ruled.

On Hamilton’s first series, Burris underthrew Onrea Jones and Chris Williams dropped a pass. The crowd got its biggest cheer when Glenn opened by underthrowing a receiver by 10 yards. Three years they watched stuff like that, and groaned. So, some small retribution for a sparse crowd announced generously at 22,635.

The second quarter, the rain stopped; the game of flubberball didn’t. Burris first play of the period saw the pass for Jones intercepted by Quincy Butler.

There were 15 penalties — nine to Calgary — for a combined 131 yards in the first half alone. And, with the grey clouds, now parched, scuttling over Ivor Wynne, the teams couldn’t even blame the offensive ennui on the rain.

STAMPS LIMIT WALKER

Chevon Walker didn’t run into a brick wall.

It just seemed that way. Walker needed 81 yards to surpass Cory Boyd’s league leading 447 yard total on a rainy Thursday night.

But the Stampeders illustrated why they have the second best defence in the CFL against the run, limiting the explosive Walker to 68 yards on 10 carries — but that included one 47-yard scamper.

“We just couldn’t get it done,” he said of the flat ground game. “I don’t know why.

“We just didn’t seem to have energy. We didn’t fight.”

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