Not this year, coach
Denton Guyer head coach John Walsh, in a
pre-game interview, reveled at the prospect of becoming the only Southlake
Carroll opponent to defeat the Dragons on their home turf twice.
As coaches sometimes do before big games,
Walsh was living large with a reporter from the friendly Denton
Record-Chronicle, observing as he must that the Wildcats’ first priority was to
win their second district game. They were coming off a District 5-6A win
against Keller Central, 34-13.
Then he got down to his team’s true
motivation.
“The icing on the cake would be winning at
Dragon Stadium again,” he said with relish. “We like playing there. I’ve kind
of thrown that stat around because it’s a fun stat. They’ve lost four times
there since it opened in 2001, and we want to be the only program that’s done
it twice.”
I’m not sure how aware the Carroll Dragons
were of Walsh’s dreamy reverie, but it was just the kind of bold, arrogant
remark that energizes a program and helps coaches focus players’ attention on
beating the snot out of the presumptuous A-hole who said it.
Frankly, the Dragons needed all the
inspiration they could muster – and the magic of a “trick” play – to remain undefeated last night and turn back a talented, determined Wildcat squad led by phenom sophomore
quarterback Eli Stowers and his elusive, hard-charging running back, Kaedric
Cobbs.
Cobbs and Stowers tore Carroll’s defensive
front line to tatters, repeatedly carving out large chunks of yardage before
being subdued by Dragon linebackers R.J. Mickens, Preston Forney and Graham
Faloona, who all had big nights.
Cobbs, who missed the first three games of
the season because of injury, is making up for lost time. After an impressive
game against Keller Central last week, he ran 28 times for 169 yards and two
TDs against Carroll. Stowers ran 19 times for 134 and two TDs.
Time after time, Southlake countered the Wildcat assaults in a seesaw battle that saw multiple lead changes.
Decisive play
The decisive play came with 11 seconds left and the score knotted 27-27. Here’s the setup:
After stifling a Guyer drive, the Dragons fielded a punt at their 38-yard line with a tad over a
minute left and no timeouts. Quarterback Will Bowers, 13 of 19 for 108 yards, tossed a couple of passes to John Manero (4-33), then hoisted a critical 22-yarder to
Eric Windham, who leaped out of bounds at the Guyer 23.
Initially, Carroll lined up for a 40-yard
field goal attempt by kicker Neal Koskay, who earlier had botched a 50-yarder.
Guyer called a timeout, and both sides retreated to make plans.
When the Carroll offense returned to the
field, it was led by Bowers and not by Koskay.
“What the …,” I murmured when it appeared head
coach Riley Dodge had decided to take another shot at the end zone instead
of gambling on a winning field goal by the normally dependable Koskay.
When Bowers received the snap, he quickly
turned left and threw a lateral to Manero, who then lofted the ball to backup
quarterback Blake Smith. In the deep left corner of the end zone, Smith
wrestled for control with a couple of Wildcats before coming down with the ball.
My side of Dragon Stadium erupted in cheers driven by
pent-up emotion as the Dragons edged ahead 33-27 with 6 ticks left on the
clock.
Guyer provided the only remaining drama
when Wildcat defender Lawrence Norton blocked Joe McFadden's extra point, then scooped up
the ball and ran it back for 2 points.
Such a thrilling finale was a fitting end
to the gameplay that preceded it.
Dodge, who now stands 5-0 in his career as
a head coach, admitted the desperate, hard-fought nature of the game had been a
taxing affair for everyone.
“Man, I’m sweating my butt off,” he
admitted in a post-game radio interview. “This was back and forth all night.
First they had the momentum, then we had the momentum, then they had it and we got
it back. I’m very proud of my guys. They never quit, they never let down.
“My hats off to Guyer. They played a real
physical game. They are a tough, tough opponent. We’ll enjoy this one.”
The
teams were tied 13-13 at half. Carroll surged to a 20-13 lead at the end of the
3rd when SMU commit T.J. McDaniel crashed 28 yards to paydirt after
an 11-play, 88-yard drive set up by a Cobbs fumble.
That laid the table for a wild 4th
quarter that left both sides of the stadium gasping for breath, one in triumph
and the other in despair.
Guyer came charging out the gate with
Stowers engineering back-to-back scoring drives in which he and Cobbs
alternated running duties. Both series ended in TD sprints by Cobbs, the first
for 21 yards and the second for 35, which handed the lead back to the Wildcats
with 5:32 left to play.
A worried murmur ran through the Dragon
faithful as Bowers began the next drive at his own 25. Did the Dragons have
enough left in the tank to overcome a 27-20 deficit?
We need not have worried. McDaniel at that
point took his team on his back and accounted for virtually all of an 8-play,
75-yard drive that evened the score once again when Bowers barreled a yard over
the goal line.
McDaniel had to work for every yard he
made, but he made them when they counted most. His 154 yards on 17 carries
included TD runs of 10, 22 and 28 yards.
Now came the hard part – blunting the
Cobbs-Stowers battering ram and keeping Guyer off the board. In a brilliant
defensive stand, the Dragon D-line dug deep and allowed Stowers and Cobb to
travel only 11 yards in 7 plays.
From there, Bowers and company set in motion
the pulse-pounding final drive and its ensuing theatrics.
Dodge said after the game that he had
intended all along to call the double-pass play at some point in the evening.
When Guyer called the timeout as Carroll prepared for the field goal attempt,
the opportunity presented itself.
“Some folks thought we were going to run
it,” Dodge said. “But I was just dialing up the special play we’ve been working
on all week. Guyer did us a favor when they called the timeout. It gave us some
time to thing about it. And we went out and executed it.”
Manero told radio announcer Chuck Kelly
that he wasn’t nervous when his coach ordered up the play, even though he’s
never once played quarterback.
“I was so excited,” he said. “We had been
practicing it all week. I’m glad it worked.”
McDaniel and the trick play garnered all
the attention on offense. But Bowers, too, excelled, despite being denied the
services of two of his best receivers because of injuries. Patrick Trainor is
out for the season, but Wills Meyer could return.
Even so, Bowers completed almost 70
percent of his passes and threw in double figures to five receivers, including
Carson White (4 for 37), and McDaniel (1 for 17). He rushed 13 times for 68
yards, a threat that eased pressure on McDaniel.
Defensive standouts included the aforementioned
linebacker corps. Michael Parish blocked an extra-point attempt for the second
week in a row, his third for the season so far.
Mickens who displayed his usual brilliance
on both sides of the ball, said it felt great to win such a bruising battle.
“We prepared all week for a physical game,
and they gave us one,” he said. “It was a very hard-nosed game.”
The key to the Dragon victory?
“We just had to work hard in preparing for
it and to come out here and play hard. Simple,” Mickens said.
Guyer came into the game with a 2-2
record, but the Dragons recognized to their credit that was a misleading
statistic. The Wildcats are a solid, disciplined and well-coached team, most
likely headed for a playoff berth. Stowers, meanwhile, is scary good. What will
he be like as an upperclassman, particularly if as excepted, Guyer makes a
playoff run?
The next step
By defeating Guyer, Carroll takes a big
step toward the district championship, but nothing’s guaranteed at this point.
District 5-6A is loaded with talent, despite being dominated by Keller schools,
once considered creampuffs in 6A competition.
Also to be considered is whether Carroll
goes Division I (big school) or Division II (small school). That picture still
is exceedingly murky and even thinking about it makes my head hurt.
But for the third week in a row, Carroll
has played tough, smack-mouth football against sturdy opponents and emerged
victorious. That’s the best preparation you can have to ensure post-season
success, which is the goal of the Dragon program in all sports.
At this point, I’d like to acknowledge a mistake
I made in a previous post when I said Guyer was the only Dragon opponent to win
twice at Dragon Stadium. That’s obviously not correct, and I apologize for the error.
What I had in mind, I think, was the 2010
season, when the two programs met twice – once in regular-season district play
at Dragon Stadium and later in the fourth round of the playoffs at Newsome Stadium
in Mansfield. The Wildcats came out on top both times.
Those two games each were memorable. The regular-season
28-14 defeat broke a 47-game winning streak for Carroll at Dragon Stadium. The
playoff game, which Guyer won 24-14, was played on a frigid, windy day in
November and was followed by several unpleasant encounters between rowdy
Wildcat fans and Dragon supporters just trying to their cars and out of the cold.
Both
encounters served to create an acrimonious rivalry between the two schools,
which periodically find themselves, like this year and next, in the same
district. As far as I know, there were no incidents before, during or after last night's contest.
Next up for the Dragons is Byron Nelson.
Can they go undefeated during the second half of the regular season, which
starts next week? I dunno, but that sounds pretty good to me.
Go Dragons!
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