McALLEN — In a frenetic finish, Brownsville Hanna quarterback Victor Campos pushed his team down the field to score a badly needed touchdown in the final two minutes of play against McAllen Memorial. The senior connected with receiver Ernesto Mendoza for a 22-yard score to narrow the deficit to two.
The next play, Campos rolled out and retreated 20 yards backward to avoid taking a sack and appeared to connect with Mendoza across the field to complete a two-point conversion for the tie. Mendoza, however, had run out of the back of the end zone during the chaos surrounding him and the play was nullified by an illegal touching call.
McAllen Memorial recovered a desperation onside kick and held on by a thread to edge out the Eagles 42-40 in a crazy Week 1 finish Friday night at McAllen Veterans Memorial Stadium.
“It was a pass right off the bat and I was blitzing off the edge,” said Memorial senior linebacker Michael Morales, who was right in Campos’ grill as he heaved the ball to the back of the end zone. “I get to the quarterback and he rolls out to his right and I’m chasing him to the side. He’s been doing it to us all night and I’m just trying the best I can to contain him and keep him from throwing it.”
Morales felt the energy being sucked out of the crowd as he and his teammates’ hearts sank, until the referees re-emerged with the reversal.
“I couldn’t believe it honestly,” he said. “I thought we were just so lucky. I don’t know if we deserved it and it might have seemed controversial, but I was happy that it happened.”
“I thought we played really well, but at the end we made critical mistakes at critical times to keep them in the ball game,” Memorial head coach Bill Littleton said. “Tip your hats off to them, they kept battling. They battled the whole game, every minute.”
In what was an at times a bizarre back-and-forth affair, the Mustangs kicked the game off with a bang, as senior quarterback Joseph Lara found senior receiver Zyan Gregory over the top of Hanna’s defense as it crowded the box for a 69-yard touchdown pass.
The long score caught the Eagles’ defense off-guard, which adjusted afterward by spreading out the field more to protect against the pass. That opened running lanes up for senior back Campbell Speights and the rest of the Mustangs’ running attack.
Speights had three long touchdown runs on the night of 51, 52 and 79 yards. He finished the night with 260 yards on the ground off of 22 carries and added four scores.
“It was whatever worked at the time,” Speights said. “We were trying to go inside. They got a couple of plays and then I busted one on the outside. They took away the inside and we found holes on the outside. It’s just adjusting to what they give us and whatever they give us, we’re going to take it.”
Littleton, Morales and Speights all said they were motivated to prove naysayers and media picks against them wrong against a quality opponent. The Mustangs hung picks against them on a bulletin board in their locker room in the week leading up to Friday’s game.
“A lot of reporters counted us out,” Speights said. “We saw that in the paper and our coaches actually put it up on the board. We like that. We love being the underdog. That means we have to prove ourselves and there are these teams that get handed the No. 1 spot and handed the No. 2 spot, but every year we have to prove ourselves and climb up. We like that though, keep us down and let us prove ourselves.”
Hanna, meanwhile, benefitted immensely in the early going from a long list of turnovers and special teams miscues committed by Memorial. A muffed punt and two more botched snaps by the Mustangs’ punter gave the Eagles starting field position inside their opponent’s 35-yard line.
“Those two turnovers there in the kicking game really hurt us,” Littleton said. “Sometimes you never know how the kicking game is going to take place. We muffed that punt and had a couple of bad snaps that kept them in the ball game.”
Campos would lead a late charge, scoring 19 points off three touchdowns in the final 12 minutes, two passing and one rushing himself. The dual threat signal caller ended the night completing 16 of 35 passes for 170 yards, a touchdown and a pick, and added 128 yards with his legs.
He impressively avoided taking a sack in the face of a vicious pass rush on the two-point try, but ultimately failed to pull through on the most controversial and consequential play of the night.
When it counted, the Mustangs’ defense bent but didn’t break. In the words of their head coach though, a win is still a win no matter how close.
“I’ll always take a one-point win,” he said. “I don’t know if we made a statement or not, but I know one thing: We got a ‘W,’ and there’s six of y’all that picked it wrong.”
Hanna returns to action when it hosts Edinburg Vela (1-0) at 7 p.m. Thursday at Sams Memorial Stadium in Brownsville. Memorial will hit the gridiron again at 7:30 p.m. Friday in Mission to face Sharyland High (1-0).