With a Sac-Joaquin Section Division VII home playoff game on the line Friday night, Linden came into River Islands, and neither team could manage a point in the first half.

In fact, all 27 points were crammed into the final 15 minutes, with the visiting Lions surviving to win the Mother Lode League contest 14-13 after the Riptide missed a last-second field goal.

River Islands (3-2 MLL, 7-2 overall) took the second-half kickoff and methodically marched 65 yards in 18 plays and ran more than nine minutes of the clock before Daryl Carpenter snuck it in from the 1-yard line to put River Islands ahead 7-0. The Riptide overcame two holding calls on that drive, but there would be more critical penalties in the game that it would not be able to overcome.

Linden (4-0, 6-2) answered on the first play of the fourth quarter with a 5-yard run by Devin Hunger (7 of 8 passing, 82 yards). River Islands responded with a 63-yard drive capped by a Lucas Ruiz 2-yard run to go ahead 13-7, but one of those critical penalties occurred after the touchdown resulting in a conversion try from the 18 instead of the 3 and the attempt failed.

“There were momentum swings,” Riptide coach Nick Kendall said. “We thought we had a turnover and then we didn’t have a turnover. We gave up a touchdown on third down and then we get down to the 3-yard line and miss a field goal.

“It was a lot. I can’t be any prouder of my seniors the way we battled today especially with the way Linden was talking about how the game was going to go today and it didn’t go that way. We had to fight all the way through and mad them fight us back. Unfortunately, in the end we came up short.”

The turnover that Kendall referred to that was not happened on the next play from scrimmage following Ruiz’s touchdown. The River Islands defense smothered a Lions receiver and the ball popped out with Michael Figueroa scooping it up and dashing 82 yards for what looked to be a score, only to have that play later ruled to be an incomplete pass.

Three minutes later with 6:34 left in the game, Antoine Moore pulled in a 9-yard pass from Hunger for the 14-13 lead.

The Riptide began its final drive from its own 41. Carpenter (15 of 20, 161 yards) hit Figueroa with a 21-yard pass to start the drive and momentum appeared to shift back to the home team. With 2:48 remaining, a blistering 8-yard run by Ruiz gave River Islands a first down at the 17, only to have another dead-ball foul move the ball back to the 32. A holding call two plays later backed the Riptide up even further, but after making it back to the 27 a 20-yard fourth-down pass from Carpenter to Ruiz gave River Islands the ball on the 7. After plugging the ball to the 3, the last-second field goal came up short and Linden went home with the heart-stopping win.

“We pulled it out and we were glad about that,” Lions coach Adrian Ramos said. “But we came out flat and we didn’t do the right things.”

The Riptide wraps up its league season Friday in Modesto against Big Valley Christian at 7 before having a bye in Week 10.