No. 1 Las Cruces advances, but it was ugly

LAS CRUCES — This was far from vintage Las Cruces High Bulldawgs football, but they did the one thing they had to do:

Advance.

The No. 1 seed in Class 6A football was, by their standards, unusually sloppy and frequently out of sorts in a game with costly turnovers, ill-timed penalties and unexpected dropped passes, but Las Cruces, keyed by a crucial sequence midway through the second half, survived a tighter-than-it-looked quarterfinal against No. 8 Los Lunas, ousting the Tigers 49-29 on Friday night at the Field of Dreams.

“We played such an ugly game,” said Bulldawgs’ senior Francisco Winnikoff, who caught a pair of touchdown passes in the first quarter, including an 82-yarder. “But we came out with a win, and at this time of the season, that’s all that matters.”

Las Cruces (11-0) will play No. 4 Centennial or No. 5 La Cueva in next week’s semifinals. If La Cueva beats the Hawks (1 p.m. Saturday at the FOD), then the semi will be at Wilson Stadium.

But the Bulldawgs did not look crisp at all on Friday, most specifically in the form of (unofficially) 191 penalty yards.

“That’s playoff football,” Las Cruces coach Mark Lopez said. “Sometimes, you have to survive and advance. Not sure we played our best offensively or defensively, but we made the plays when we needed to.”

And to be clear, the underdog Tigers (8-4) were equal to the task pretty much the entire way. They lost by 20, but this is a game Los Lunas easily could have won.

“They weren’t scared of anything,” Los Lunas coach Greg Henington said. “It just burns that we didn’t get the outcome we wanted.”

Los Lunas scored on the game’s first drive, 95 seconds into the game on Martin Cordova’s 2-yard run. He caught a 67-yard pass from Luke Cieremans two plays earlier that put the Tigers inside the Las Cruces 10.

The Bulldawgs also scored on their first drive. On fourth-and-4 from the Los Lunas 5, QB Gunnar Guardiola pitched to Danny Amaro, who pulled up and found Winnikoff in the back of the end zone.

The 82-yarder, which was mostly yards after catch by Winnikoff, made it 21-7 in the final minute of the quarter. In between those TD grabs, there was a 37-yard pick-6 by Hunter Parmeter.

Cordova scored on a 12-yarder early in the second quarter for a 21-14 game. The Tigers at the end of the first half were at the Las Cruces 1.

Los Lunas had no timeouts. The Tigers tried a sneak with Cieremans, but it was stopped, and the clock ran out on Los Lunas which chose not to throw it in that scenario.

“I thought we would bang it in,” Henington said.

Lopez said Las Cruces had been working to stop that sneak.

“It’s been a go-to for them all year. Coach (Gino) Satriana (the defensive coordinator), prepared our defense for that moment,” Lopez said.

The teams traded scores to start the third quarter. Las Cruces led 28-21 when the teams arrived at a crazy sequence that changed both teams’ fortunes.

Las Cruces faced a fourth-and-25 from the Los Lunas 34. Guardiola dropped back to throw, but was intercepted on a desperation heave, and returned 90 yards for a pick-6 by Angel Aguilar.

But the Tigers were flagged for roughing the passer. Las Cruces got a fresh set of downs, the Los Lunas TD was negated, and the Bulldawgs scored on an 11-yard run by Amaro on the first play of the fourth quarter.

“That was one of the most beautiful pick-6s I’ve seen in my career. We’re very disappointed it got called back,” Henington said.

Something equally bad happened to Los Lunas moments later, when one of the Tigers didn’t field the ensuing kickoff, apparently believing it would roll into the end zone for a touchback.

The ball stopped rolling at the 1. Las Cruces’ Isaac Gomez pounced on it, and Amaro scored on the next play, and that was two TDs in eight seconds for the Bulldawgs, who now led 42-21.

“That was definitely the dagger,” Henington said of a game that the Tigers nearly had tied at 28 before falling three touchdowns in the hole.

“That was a huge sequence,” Lopez said later.

Amaro added a 28-yard touchdown to close the scoring with just under four minutes remaining to clinch the victory.

“We’re not even playing our best football,” Winnikoff said. “And we’re still winning football games. And winning is all that matters.”

Amaro vowed that Las Cruces would return to form in the semifinals.

“Today was not us,” he said. “We have to get a lot better. We can’t keep playing like this.”