“We didn’t put ourselves in bad positions offensively, we stayed ahead of the chains and we were in good situations all night where we could take shots down the field when we wanted to,” Bearcats head coach Robby Jones said. “It wasn’t one of those situations where we would put ourselves in third-and-long and had to throw the ball, so we kind of kept them off balance offensively.”
Along with another strong effort by the defense, which still has not allowed more than 14 points in a game this year, senior quarterback Lincoln Tubbs put together an impressive night. Against Richland, Tubbs accounted for 418 total yards of offense and five of Aledo’s nine touchdowns. Tubbs threw for 270 yards and four scores after completing 12 of his 19 pass attempts. Additionally, the speedy senior ran the rock 12 times for 138 yards and a score, good for an average of 11.5 yards per carry.
“The defense just did what they’ve been doing all year,” Jones said. “Those guys put some points on the board against us last year, so our defense came out making sure that wasn’t going to happen this year. That’s what we’ve been missing was that type of performance from one of our quarterbacks. He had kind of a breakout performance. It showed the full potential of our offense. I’ve been saying all along that we have a really good defense, we just haven’t put everything together yet. We kind of put it together last week. Now, the thing is, we’ve got to be consistent with that – we need to keep it together.”
Along with Tubbs’ mastery of the Royals, Aledo’s offense impressed as a collective unit. The Bearcats tallied 28 first downs and accumulated 647 yards of total offense. On the flip side, the stalwart defense allowed only 11 first downs and 191 total offensive yards. While already playing in peak form, Jones is pushing his team to continue staying true to their mission of weekly improvement towards a potential record-extending 13th state title.
“We need to keep working on the things that improved us last week and keep throwing the ball, keep running the football,” Jones said. “We can do those things if we just stay with what we did last week. The defense takes pride in not allowing any points and, if you look at our defense, it’s a solid defense from the front four, the three linebackers and the four guys in the back – there’s no drop off and no real weakness in our defense. They also just fly around and are having fun and, right now, as long as they continue to fly around and have fun, our defense is going to have good nights.”
Next, Aledo shifts its focus to the Azle Hornets, who will enter Tim Buchanan Stadium for Aledo’s Senior Night game, and Jones and the Bearcats are cognizant of the Hornets’ playmakers entering this week’s matchup.
“Aiden Mackey kind of leads that group. He had a couple good catches against us last year, and he’s pretty dang good, so we’ve got to make sure that we’re not allowing him to get big plays on us,” Jones said. “They also return their quarterback from last year (Derrek Vowell), and he’s a lot better than he was last year. Offensively, they struggled earlier in the year, but they’ve got some good coaches over there in Azle, and they’ve got those guys playing better football defensively here recently. They were a senior-heavy group last year on defense.”
While they started the season young and inexperienced, Jones pointed to the Hornets’ measured improvement throughout. Despite that, he hopes his starters will get quality reps during the contest and then will shift his sights to honor as many senior players as possible if the Bearcats handle business early.
“Overall goals, we want to go out, and we want to execute kind of similar to what we did last week,” Jones said. “If we do that, we feel good about the outcome of the game going in our favor. We want to stay injury free and continue to work on getting better and better each week leading into the playoffs. If we do get fortunate enough to have a lead, some of the seniors that maybe haven’t gotten a ball thrown to them, something like that, maybe try to get the ball out to some of those guys.”
Aledo (8-0, 6-0) will host Azle (2-6, 2-4) at 7 p.m. Friday at Tim Buchanan Stadium, Aledo’s final regular-season home contest. Aledo has all but locked up the District 3-5A Division I crown and will go for its 134th consecutive district victory.
Get scores and photos throughout the game at facebook.com/epcnews.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here