The Littlefield Wildcats’ varsity football came out in front of a slugfest with Denver City on Friday night, 18-14, as they now look to defend their home field against the Post Antelopes this week.
With the win the Wildcats improved to 2-0 overall on the season.
“I give Coach Bryant and our defensive staff a lot of credit for a great game plan,” Head Coach Jimmy Thomas said. “He has come in and switched defenses to my defensive philosophy and has done a great job with it. Our defense is carrying us right now, especially while we are young in this offense right now.”
He added, “At halftime, our game plan was just to run right at them. Things weren’t going our way offensively and they had two defensive ends that are really good. Sometimes to neutralize those guys, you run right at them and I think we wore them down a little as the game went on. The offensive line played pretty good in the second half. We knew that was a good defensive football team, but I think it was a life lesson, because you just keep playing and right around the time you want to quit, typically success is right around the corner.”
Offensively, the Wildcats had 131 yards of total offense, including 36 passing yards and 95 rushing yards.
“We talked about the ‘Next Man In’ mentality on Saturday; everybody on this team has a role, it’s a different role, but you have to be ready to play and Friday night was a great example of that,” the coach explained.
Defensively, the Wildcats held the Mustangs to 125 yards of total offense, including 25 passing yards and 100 rushing yards. They also shutout Denver City in the second half. They were led in tackles by Javen Jimenez, who finished with 18 total tackles.
“The pick-six was huge right before halftime. It was a big play and this defense causes those turnovers,” he stated. “It was a huge play by Jaron Cabello and it really gave us a shot in the arm and gave us a lot momentum going into the second half. We still had to play four quarters to win it, but the kids responded well in the second half.”
This week the Wildcats host the Post Antelopes, who are coming off of a, 22-6 loss to Forsan.
“They’re an I football team, so they’re going to run power toss and toss sweep at you over and over and over again. They’ve got a 6’7” tight end who is a DI commit,” Coach Thomas said. “They’ve got a running back, who is going to Baylor, but I think our defense matches up to what they do. If they put one in the box, we’re going to put one in the box and I feel really confident about our defense right now.”
He added, “They’re starting to spread out Zach Courtney, that was their touchdown last week; they lobbed it up to him and he made a play over two guys. We’ve got some stuff ready for that, but we’re just going to have to play good defense and tackle. Eighty percent of the time they’re going to run the ball right at us, so the game will be a little shorter, and sometimes we worry about that even in our offense, but I think we are just going to have to make tackles.”
Coach Thomas talked about what they will have to do on the offensive side of the ball, saying, “Offensively, we just have to be consistent. At times we do some really good things; right now, we’re running the power really well. I’ve always kind of said, ‘it doesn’t matter how we win the game’, we don’t have to throw for 500 yards as long as we can do what we need to do. We are running the ball really well for the most part in the second half when we run it right at people. We’re doing some different things to help us this week. We just need to be more consistent.”
The Wildcats will kick-off against the Antelopes at 7 p.m. on Friday at Wildcat Stadium.