The Littlefield Wildcats had a convincing win in their seasonopener over Dimmitt, 56-0, last Friday, as they turn their attention to their road match-up against the Denver City Mustangs.
With the win, the Wildcats improve to 1-0 overall to begin the season.
“Going back to the first half, we left a touchdown on the field right before halftime,” Head Coach Brent Green said. “We’ve been working on a lot of new things to go along with our offense and we were trying to mix a bunch of that stuff in. We had a couple of breakdowns, but all-in-all execution wise I thought we were decent. But, out physical level of play was exactly where it needs to be, but it will come. Sometimes that takes time, and we’re still working on that everyday.”
The Wildcats totaled 385 yards of total offense, including 292 rushing yards and 93 passing yards, while holding Dimmitt to just 83 total yards of offense.
Senior quarterback, Blake Green, completed 50% of his passes, finishing the game eight-of-16 passing for 93 yards and one touchdown. He also had a pass for a two-point conversion. He added 12 carries for 116 yards and two touchdowns on the ground as well. Wildcats’ rushing attack with seven carries for 106 yards and four touchdowns, while junior, Jordan Trevino, added two carries for 27 yards and a touchdown.
In the receiving game, Trevino added two catches for 16 yards and one touchdown, while senior, Chris Brown, caught two passes for 39 yards and junior, Jaron Cabello, caught two balls for 21 yards.
Defensively, The Wildcats forced four takeaways; including two fumble recoveries by Matthew Solis, and one by both Javier Ibarra and Caden Longoria. Ethan Garcia also recorded a safety.
The Wildcats were led in tackles by Tavion Ivery, who finished with five solo tackles and three assists. Senior defensive end, Gus McNabb, finished with four tackles, seven assists and one sack, while Garcia tallied three tackles, two assists and one sack.
Javen Jimenez also had four tackles and nine assists in the contest.
This week the Wildcats travel to Denver City to take on the Mustangs.
“The number one thing we’re going to have to do is stop their quarterback, he is what makes them go,” Coach Green said. “He was their District MVP last year and he is a whole lot of what they like to do offensively. They like to keep the ball in his hands and he will scramble pretty early, he is not going to sit around and wait. He likes to have the ball in his hands and he does a good job with it, so we’re going to have to do a good job of containing him and getting him on the ground.”
He added, “Offensively, we’re going to have to build on what we did last week and put drives together and be extremely physical on the line of scrimmage because Denver City is going to be. We’re just going to have to be consistent and get the ball in the endzone.”
The Wildcats had seven rushing touchdown last week.
Coach Green talked about building off of that performance, saying, “One good thing about our offensive backfield is that we have Blake who can carry the ball, TC, who can carry the ball and we feel like we have two or three slotbacks, who can get in the mix and carry the ball. We have some guys that we can spread the ball around to, not only in the run game, but in the passing game as well. We’re going to have to attack all areas of the field and get the ball in some open spaces and let some kids play.”
Coach Green talked about the type of defenses Denver City may throw at them this week, saying, “In the past, they’ve always been a 5-3 Stack team defensively, but they have shifted to a split defense, so they’ll run a split on one side and do some down on the other.”
He added, “As far as what we’ve seen on film, it’s something that we’ve worked quite a bit against during two-a-days. How they might make changes to it, who knows. We may have to make some in-game adjustments, but for now we are working against a split, split-solid and a solid front. We have ways to attack all three of those fronts, so we should be in good shape there.”
Coach Green said that he feels the keys to getting a victory will be to sustain drives and score when they get into the red zone.
“That is something that we’ve really stressed and we struggled with at times last year,” he said. “We would get all the way down the field and not punch it in.”
He added, “We’re going to have to keep playing good defense. If we do those things we’ll have a good opportunity to win the game.”
The Wildcats and Mustangs will kick-off at 7:30 p.m. on Friday in Denver City.