At the end of Thursday night at Dick Bivins Stadium, though the Rebels stood toughest and assured themselves of a fifth straight playoff berth.
In a District 2-5A Division I clash with crosstown rival Caprock in which both teams had something to prove, the game lived beyond the hype. But big-game experience showed up for Tascosa, as quarterback Hudson Farris scored on a 1-yard run in overtime for a 34-28 victory.
After the win, Tascosa coach Ken Plunk felt more relief than jubilation.
“It’s definitely rewarding but very, very uncomfortable,” Plunk said. “Caprock is very well-drilled and very well scouted-up and made us do some things particularly defensively we don’t like doing. We try hard and right now we’re down on depth with two linebackers out in the first half. We’ll have to reevaluate things of that nature. We got out with a win and that’s what I’m proud of.”
It became a battle of attrition as the game went along. While Tascosa (7-1, 4-0 in district) was shorthanded on defense, Caprock (5-4, 2-3) had to play the final minutes of regulation and overtime without quarterback Lleyten Brown, who injured his back.
Prior to that Brown had thrown for 163 yards and three touchdown passes, including a 23-yard score to Carlos Gonzalez with just under eight minutes left in regulation to tie it at 28.
When Brown went out, Dallas Juarez came in at quarterback for the final three minutes. He got the Longhorns down to the Tascosa 34-yard line, but they hurt themselves with a pair of false start penalties, and couldn’t get any closer, resulting in overtime.
Caprock got the ball to start overtime. The Longhorns had the ball at the Tascosa 9, but Ke’Mauri Pinkard intercepted Juarez in the end zone to end the drive.
The Rebels then used Treshun Wilson to move the ball to Caprock’s 4. Two runs by Farris, the last from the 1, ended the game and gave Tascosa the win.
That was the second of two 1-yard scoring runs for Farris, including one at the beginning of the fourth quarter to give the Rebels a 28-21 lead.
Tascosa delivered predictably on the ground, running for 319 yards. Wilson (109 yards and a touchdown on 15 carries) and Tayden Barnes (104 yards on 14 carries) both went over the century mark for the Rebels.
Wilson’s 9-yard scoring run capped Tascosa’s first drive after the opening kickoff for a 7-0 lead.
Caprock got on the board later in the quarter after stopping the Rebels on downs, tying the game 7-7 on a 31-yard scoring pass from Brown to Kadrian Hernandez.
Tascosa was hard to stop in the first half offensively, taking a 14-7 lead on Lincoln White’s 24-yard run. The Rebels forced a Caprock punt on the ensuing possession and took over at their own 3-yard line.
On fourth down, Tascosa’s Keevin Ledoux lined up for his first punt of the night, but Caprock’s Ramses Cota broke through and deflected it, and the Longhorns recovered at the Tascosa 5. Jamel Acosta-Lewis carried it in on the next play to tie it 14-14 with 1:47 left in the half.
That lasted all of 48 seconds. The Rebels made a rare deep throw pay off, as Hudson Farris hit Ke’Mauri Pinkard on a 64-yard scoring pass which gave Tascosa a 21-14 halftime lead.
