By MARIO AGUIRRE | STAFF WRITER
With two games left in the regular season, Roma coach Max Habecker Jr. doesn’t feel any added pressure to win The Monitor’s Game of the Week against Sharyland Pioneer.
As he sees it, “They’re all must-wins.”
But the fact of the matter is that if his Gladiators (6-2 overall, 2-2 in district) can close out the final two games — starting at 7:30 tonight at Richard Thompson Stadium — they’ll secure their second straight playoff berth.
Once again, both teams find themselves in a high-stakes game in Week 10. Pioneer (6-3, 2-3), for its part, needs to win to keep alive its postseason hopes in what will be its regular-season finale.
Even if it loses tonight, Roma can remain in the playoff conversation by winning in Week 11. But as they’ve learned in recent years, the Gladiators have left themselves susceptible to the outcomes of other games to qualify, and have consequently fallen short.
“At the end of the day, we’ve just got to go out and win as many district games as possible,” Habecker said. “Every district win is important.”
Once again, the injury report is woven into the storyline. Last year, Roma welcomed back an all-district receiver to balance its offense in time for the matchup against Pioneer. This year, the Gladiators are uncertain whether they’ll have Ramon Espinoza, one of the district’s most productive backs, ready to play.
Espinoza sat out the team’s previous game, in Week 9, to recover from a nagging forearm injury that slowed him the previous two games. During the bye in Week 10, Habecker said Espinoza mostly went through conditioning drills.
The Diamondbacks have had their own injury concerns, namely to their starting quarterback, who is out for the year. In that role now is freshman Jacob Rosales, who was called up from the junior varsity team nearly a month ago.
Rosales started his first game of the year last week and showed promise in a 19-10 loss to Sharyland High.
Pioneer (6-3, 2-3) has made improvements from a year ago, with 50 returning lettermen and 10 starters back on both sides of the ball. They won six in a row to start the year and had recent games against Mission Veterans Memorial and Sharyland High decided in the closing minutes.
Part of that is due to their defense, Like Roma, Pioneer has among the stingiest units in district. Roma has given up a meager 245 yards per contest (best in 31-5A) and the Diamondbacks have surrendered the second-fewest yards (259.1).
Similarly, Pioneer has yielded an average of 15.3 points per game, while Roma has given up 16.6.
“They do a good job of not giving up the big plays,” Pioneer coach Jason Wheeler said. “I think we match up a lot better this year than last year (when the Diamondbacks lost 37-3) because of our 4-3 defense.
“It’s probably going to come down to which offense makes the fewest mistakes.”
In facing a similar scenario in Week 10 as they did last season, Habecker believes “the stage won’t be too big” for his players tonight. They closed out the regular-season last year with two straight wins to clinch a postseason berth, beating 32-5A champion Mercedes before narrowly losing to Gregory-Portland in the area round.
“No matter how high or high low, they know you have to play the next play. There’s always going to be another opportunity,” Habecker said. “You just have to keep moving forward on drive at a time, one quarter at a time. And in the end, if we do more good things than bad, we’ll be in a good position.”