La Cueva walks off Centennial in quarterfinal thriller

LAS CRUCES — At the end, the La Cueva Bears had a great Chance.

Chance as in Chance Whitmire, their reliable senior placekicker, who calmly booted a 32-yard field goal as time expired, and the fifth-seeded Bears came from two touchdowns behind in the second half to upset No. 4 Centennial 24-21 in a thrilling, topsy-turvy Class 6A football quarterfinal on Saturday afternoon at the Field of Dreams.

“We always have faith in Chance,” sophomore wide receiver Chris Lopez said. “You should see what he does in practice. He’s amazing.”

The Bears raced onto the field and swarmed their kicker after his 12th made field goal in 13 tries this season.

La Cueva (10-2), which won its 10th straight game, will play host to No. 1 Las Cruces (11-0) at 7 p.m. Friday at Wilson Stadium in the semifinals. The Bears are hosting as the lower seed; last year as the higher seed, they played at the Field of Dreams against the Bulldawgs in the semis.

“Another chance for us to show that we’ve been overlooked all year,” La Cueva coach Brandon Back said.

The other semi is 1 p.m. Saturday in Rio Rancho, with No. 2 Cleveland, the defending champion, welcoming No. 3 Hobbs, who is in the final four for the first time since 1981.

Centennial (7-4) led La Cueva 21-7 at halftime after a 21-point outburst in the second quarter, sparked by senior quarterback Ruiz Laborin, who rushed for 143 yards and two touchdowns in that quarter alone.

La Cueva had scored on the game’s opening drive, going 67 yards in nine plays. Vaughn Saunders capped it with a 1-yard run just over three minutes in.

The Hawks had nothing going offensively in the first quarter, but ramped up their ground game, led by Laborin, in the next one. Anthony Villa scored the first Centennial points, taking a direct snap and darting 51 yards for a touchdown.

La Cueva fumbled the ball away moments later, the Hawks recovered, and Laborin scored on a 2-yard run five plays later for a 14-7 lead for the Hawks. Laborin, with a powerful 29-yard scoring run with 3:25 left before halftime, stretched the lead to 14 for Centennial on an unusually warm November afternoon in Las Cruces.

The Hawks could have led by even more at half, but a 28-yard field goal attempt came out low and banged off the crossbar.

“(Halftime) was more about not being negative with each other, not getting on each other,” Back said. “We were getting a little too tight there, making some big mistakes.”

La Cueva’s defense got a quick stop to open the second half, and the offense cut the deficit in half moments later, as Monty Melendez threw a 15-yard touchdown pass to Lopez — Lopez was a relentless presence throughout the second half, and was a player the Hawks continually failed to keep close in coverage at key moments — and it was 21-14 not even three minutes into the third quarter.

Near the end of the quarter, Laborin completed a pass that would have given Centennial a first down on third and long, but a La Cueva defender punched the ball out of Andrew Sandoval’s hands and into the hands of Bears linebacker Brody Clark, who quickly went the other way 42 yards for a touchdown, and a tie game.

“At the beginning, we were looking a little tough, not a lot of us were locked in and doing our jobs,” Clark said. “At halftime, we all dialed in and we got it done.”

Back said he believed that was La Cueva’s seventh defensive score of the season.

Centennial was held scoreless in the second half by Clark and his cohorts on that La Cueva defense, although it was the Hawks’ special teams that truly haunted them.

Their kicker, Jordan Trujillo, missed three field goals in this game, none of them longer than 31 yards. He was short on a 25-yard attempt early in the fourth quarter.

He had a shot at redemption in the final minute, but pushed a 31-yard attempt wide right with 57 seconds to go, setting up La Cueva’s unexpected game-winning drive.

Ironically enough, this game clearly was destined for overtime, both coaches agreed, until La Cueva’s Saunders — subbing for the injured J-Dylan Hathaway, who was taken away by ambulance after a serious ankle injury in the first half — ripped off a 40-yard run on third-and-10, getting La Cueva to the Centennial 40.

“I wasn’t expecting it to be as big as it was,” Back said.

Centennial coach Aaron Ocampo admitted he already was thinking about what plays he was going to call in overtime.

Back said he just wanted to run a bunch of time off the clock and see if Ocampo would burn his final timeout.

But Saunders’ 40-yard run suddenly and dramatically changed the narrative.

“I was just looking to make the right play,” Saunders said. “I came in when we needed it, and that was just a big run for me.”

Said Back, “They had that soft front, and Vaughn just made a great play and put us in a position (to score).”

La Cueva was 2nd-and-12 from the Centennial 42 when Melendez found Lopez on a 13-yard gain — and the Hawks picked up a 15-yard face mask penalty on this play, to boot. As a side note, Lopez had six catches that resulted in a first down Saturday.

“He’s a playmaker we’ve been leaning on all year,” Back said.

The clock was at :02 when La Cueva spent its final timeout and sent Whitmire out to ship the Bears to the semis.

“We’ve been in this situation before. We know we have a good team, and we’ve got a team that wants to fight all the time, fight all the way to the end, and we did,” Back said.

For Centennial, Ocampo said the loss can’t be pinned on the missed field goals.

“I didn’t do a good job in the red zone calling plays,” he said. “We have to finish drives, and that’s on me.”