Under the lights against Harlingen South, the San Benito Greyhounds definitely had to do some bobbing and weaving of their own.
Spurred by excellent defense which forced three Hawk turnovers, San Benito got a not-easy-but-we’ll-take-it 17-13 win at Bobby Morrow Stadium to clinch a playoff spot heading into the regular season finale.
The win puts the Hounds (7-2 overall, 5-1 district) in a position to at least share the 32-6A title with a win at Brownsville Rivera next week. However, the triumph was by no means pretty, or easy for that matter.
“Our kids did a great job of staying in the game and focused,” San Benito coach Dan Gomez said. “But we’ve got a lot of things to clean up. We’ll get to work real fast and look at what we did wrong. It’s a district win and it puts us closer to our goal, which is a district championship.
We know Rivera will be ready to play. Everybody’s getting ready to play San Benito now.”
The Hawks (3-5, 3-3) committed 14 penalties, two which wiped out touchdowns, to cool down their spirited effort to upset the ‘Hounds for a second straight season. A 97-yard interception return TD by Darren Perez and a would-be 86-yard scoring romp were each taken off the board, contributing to the sting of what could have been for South coach Lanny Wilson.
“Never in my 29 years have I had that many penalties called against me,” Wilson said. “Maybe we committed them, but I’m gonna have to take a look at the film. Any big things (we did were penalized).
Our kids don’t stop and never have stopped (fighting). We upset these guys last year and had a shot to do it tonight. I’m mad about the loss, but I’m proud of the kids. We’re gonna do whatever we can to try and win next week.”
It was an inauspicious start for both squads until the Greyhound defense stuffed South on downs which led to Alejandro Lugo’s 22-yard field goal to open the scoring with 57 ticks left in the opening quarter.
South fought valiantly as Wilson alluded to and went ahead on Brandon Villarreal’s 17-yard hookup with Alec Garza to put the Hawks up 7-3 with 9:42 left in the second. Garza had a superb night, hauling in seven catches for 89 yards and the score.
San Benito could not convert an interception by Smiley Escamilla, but later went back in front when J.R. Gaitan found a sliding Mando Medrano for a 12-yard score to put it at 10-7 at intermission.
After the Hawks muffed a punt, San Benito was poised to put it away, but South’s Perez picked off Gaitan and returned it for a touchdown or near TD but a block in the back negated it. Then later, Adrian Torres zipped 86 yards to score, but a holding call prevented that score. Escamilla got his second pick for San Benito to thwart that chance.
South later closed to 17-13 on a six-yard run from Steven Rodriguez with 8:18 left in the game, but could get no closer.