At the half, it was knotted up at 11 apiece.

The fourth quarter ended with the scoreboard displaying a 28-28 tie.

Same goes for the first exchange in overtime.

And a 31-31 deadlock was how the second and final extra session concluded.

Yet despite the glaring frustration of being unable to steal an outright win on the road, Bo Levi Mitchell is choosing to look at the Stamps trip to Ottawa in a positive light.

“That’s very big for Week 1 of the season,” said Mitchell in front of his temporary locker stall at TD Place Stadium on Friday night. “Obviously there was a lot of emotion in that game which I think kind of played into it. I think guys were kind of dead by the end of it and we lost some guys, too. Some people had to plug-and-play at different positions so we just can’t panic when that happens. We’ve just got to talk, communicate, and guys have got to be ready to play another position because it happens in the CFL with an 18-game season. But so far, for Week 1, it was very good.”

The star pivot points out that the opening game of the year is always challenging when there’s no regular-season game film to scout the opponent.

“You don’t have eight weeks of film on these guys,” Mitchell said. “You have previous seasons and you can guess what they’re going to do, but they have very good defensive coaches over there and they have very good defensive players. They can do a lot of different things, and they did.

“I think we started to pick it up and honestly I think we were moving the ball the entire game, I just think in Week 1 there’s always that one play that maybe we take a shot and miss and it kills the drive. We need to continue to take momentum into our hands and put up more points.”

Quarterbacks Bo Levi Mitchell and Trevor Harris after the 2017 season-opener in Ottawa (Photo by Canadian Press/Justin Tang)

Mitchell, who completed 31 of his 48 pass attempts for 376 yards and a pair of touchdown tosses, also realizes the extensive history between the RedBlacks and Stamps likely plays a factor in their recent down-to-the-wire battles.

These two teams have now gone to overtime in three of their last four meetings including the 2016 Grey Cup in Toronto, and Calgary’s last three trips to the Nation’s Capital have all needed an additional coin toss after the first 60 minutes.

“Their head coach is a previous coach of ours,” began the quarterback with the top winning percentage in CFL history. “They’ve got a lot of guys over there that played on this team and they understand how we coach and how we run things over here and we’re not going to change for anybody. We do what we do and we think we’re the best at doing it. We are familiar with what they do, they are familiar with what we do, so it’s a lot of one-on-one matchups. It’s winning 50-50 balls and sometimes you win some and sometimes you don’t. And when you win the same amount as you lose, it kind of ends in a tie.”

A second consecutive clash is in store on Thursday back at McMahon Stadium, and if overtime is to be required yet again when the Stampeders open up their home schedule, you can bet Mitchell will have made some adjustments in order to find the end zone when it matters most.

“I’m tired of us not putting touchdowns (on the board) in overtime,” No. 19 noted. “That’s on me first and foremost. (I’ve got to) just keep giving guys shots and allow them to go up and make plays and when they want to bring pressure, just get the ball in the guys’ hands. I think we can go back and look at film, complete some things and we’ll finish that game to win.”