After losing two of their toughest games of the season, the Tigers bounced back with a 61-9 win at J arrell Friday thanks to four Cam’Ron Valdez touchdowns and 28 unanswered points in the second quarter.
“We needed to get off to a fast start,” said RHS football coach J eff Miller. “We needed to strike early and get some of our mojo back.
“We’d gone a game and a half without havin confi0 dence or playing very well. I t was nice to kind of get back on track.”
I n addition to Valdez, the Tigers were also led by J ace Robinson. The junior quarterback threw for more than 200 yards for the sixth time this season completing 10-of-16 for 243 yards and two touchdowns.
Although this was the third time this season that RHS has beaten an opponent by more than 50 points, Miller says his team has a lot to improve.
“We still made a lot of mistakes on Friday,” he said. “We just got away with them because ( arrell) didn’t have the people to take advantage of those mistakes.
“We had some guys that took plays off and that really put us in a bind,” Miller said. “We have a couple of injuries because of that.”
PLAY-BY-PLAY–Valdez got the ball rolling midway throujh the first with a joal line TD to put RHS up 7-0.
Later in the quarter, Kobe Mitchell scored his third touchdown of the season on a 19-yard pass from J ace Robinson.
Rockdale led 14-3 going into the second after J arrell’s J esus Perez made a 40-yard field joal.
I n the second quarter, it was all Rockdale with four straight touchdowns. First, Robinson threw his longest pass of the game to Ross Loth for a 65-yard TD.
Then, the junior Q B scored his first touchdown of the game two minutes later on a five0yard run. Yalde} scored the other two on a five0yard run and a 6<0yard0 er where he broke the Cougar defensive line and outran safety J oseph Crathers down the middle of the field for his third touchdown of the game.
Rockdale led 41-3 at halftime.
Valdez scored his fourth and final TD of the game towards the end of the third on a 30-yard run. J arrell’s J asper Compton scored the final Cougar points on a 57-yard pass from quarterback Heron Rodriguez.
With their second string in the final minute of the third, Drayton Castaneda scored his first varsity touch0 down on a 18-yard run. Castaneda crossed the goal line again on a 13-yard run with less than four minutes to play.
PLAYO FF PICTU R E– Goin into the final week of district, the Tigers hold the tiebreaker for third place over Lago Vista. RHS beat the Vikings 52-28 on Oct. 11.
The Vikings are coming off a 40-33 loss to district champion Troy where the game wasn’t put away until the final two minutes.
GRANDVIEW–After losing to Cameron last Friday, it looked like the Tigers were going to play Whitney in the bi-district round of the playoffs and avoid 2018 state champion Grandview. That all changed on Friday when the Wildcats took down a Z ebra team that only lost four starters to graduation with 19 unanswered points in the fourth to beat GHS 26-21.
With that win, Whitney clinched the first seed and the Z ebras are the second seed from District 9-3A-I and it’s looking like RHS will faceoff with Grandview in the first round once ajain.
“The guys are excited to play Grandview,” Miller said. “They want the chance to play them again.”
The Tigers lost to the ebras in last year’s bi-district game 45-21 in a game that was close until the final five minutes of the fourth quarter. Grandview went on to win the state championship.
ACADEM Y–This week, the UK plays in their final district game of the season at home against Academy.
Sicked to finish fourth in district in the pre-season by Texas Footall M aazine, the Bumblebees have encountered injuries throughout this season including to junior starting quarterback J erry Cephus, who led AHS in passing and rushing in their 2018 playoff season.
The Bees are 1-4 in district with their most recent loss to J arrell 37-35 on Oct. 25.
Despite Academy’s bad luck, Miller still sees plenty of things his team needs to correct before they take on the 2018 state champions the following week.
“There are some things we need to clean up,” Miller said. “We have to be more aggressive on the offensive line and fix thinjs on our run defense as well as our route running.
“I f we make a lot of the same mistakes we made last Friday in the first playoff game, it will be our only playoff game.”
Kickoff is at 7:30p.m.
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