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ROTA, Spain – The Baumholder Bucs dominated the line of scrimmage Friday night, but it took a misfired field-goal try by the home team in the game’s final 12 seconds to allow them to depart with a 26-23 victory over the defending European Division-III champion Rota Admirals.Baumholder amassed 355 yards rushing and 100 passing in the nine-man contest to end the Admirals’ 12-game winning streak. Fittingly, it took some late Baumholder heroics to do snap Europe’s second-longest active win streak.With three minutes left in the game, Rota scored to take the lead, only to see Baumholder regain the edge at 26-23 on its final possession of the game. Rota then drove to the Baumholder 12-yard line in the waning moments and elected to attempt a field goal that would have tied the game on fourth-and-goal. It was unsuccessful.Fullback K.C. Mason, to whom Rota often snaps the ball in the shotgun formation, completed five-of-18 passes for 113 yards and two touchdowns. Baumholder, however, limited him to just 29 yards in 10 carries on the ground and held the entire Rota ground game to just 64 net yards in 24 attempts.Ramon Quijano led the Rota rushing attack, which saw three ball-carriers held to negative yardage, with 48 yards on eight tries.Mason was the story on defense for the Admirals, too. He was credited with being in on 27 stops and recovering a fumble.Next up for the Bucs (4-0), playing their first season of nine-man, is a home showdown Saturday against Bamberg for the unofficial D-III championship of Germany. Rota (3-1) is idle this weekend and is to play at Bamberg on Oct. 13.

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