St. Pius responds to last week's loss with dominating win against Portales

The plan for St. Pius on Friday after coming off its first loss of the season last week to Albuquerque Academy was to show that the fluke was not the first half of its season, but rather the outcome against the Chargers.

Mission accomplished. All it really took was a punishing, game-opening drive, which set the stage for a dominating 45-7 win over Portales at Milne Stadium.

“We had to hit the reset button,” Sartans coach Curtis Flakes II said. ”We talked to them about being resilient all week and remaining calm in the storm.”

St. Pius (5-1, 2-1 District 2-4) opened its ground game to start, throwing just once in an 11-play, 63-yard drive that chewed up almost five minutes and was capped by Ezra Ocampo’s 4-yard run.

“A lot of people, they think that we're like this big-play offense, that we score off these one plays, two plays,” said Sartans running back Hershul Olloway Jr., who had 36 yards on the drive and finished with 165 and two touchdowns. “But it was great to able to put down just a well-built drive, just hitting on every single cylinder, and just pushing the ball down the field and controlling the clock, and then you hit the big boys.”

It was the type of manhandling sequence that set the tone for the rest of the game, said St. Pius quarterback Isaiah Carpenter.

“Like Hershul said earlier, it shows that we're not just one big-play-touchdown type of team,” he said. “That we can string together an almost perfect drive, make the right play calling and just play as a team all together, as one unit.”

And it also spread the defense, which the Sartans were able to exploit as the game progressed.

“It definitely helps me later down the game, because it's able to establish the run and help keep the defense honest,” Carpenter said. “It kind of sets up everything that coach wants to be able to do.”

And it also helped ease the Sartans concerns after last week.

“Definitely last week, I think there was a lot of outside noise and critics coming off of that loss, kind of questioning what type of team we were,” Carpenter said. “But being able to go back and practice, string together a solid week of practice, and be able to continue to play hard and keep us honest. Like that loss kept us honest, and we were able to make sure we kept that switch on in our mind.”

The St. Pius defense, which allowed only 168 yards in total offense to the Rams (2-4, 2-2), forced a three-and-out, and the Sartans responded with a 19-play drive capped by a Preston Terrazas field goal — a first for St. Pius this season.

After Olloway polished off a 69-yard drive with a 16-yard touchdown run on the Sartans' next possession, St. Pious broke out the big plays. Curtis Flakes III, who struggled last week, caught a 48-yard touchdown with an acrobatic grab, then Cayl Cox-Liggins snared toe-tapping scoring catches of 39 and 33 yards sandwiched around an 87-yard touchdown run for Olloway.

“We always want to dominate on the line,” Coach Flakes said. “But we had some sense with it. So if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. We had to adjust our plan, because we were running the ball so well early. We were controlling the clock and methodically moving on the field.”

All the Sartans wanted to do was show the way they can play football, and last week was not it, Olloway said.

“It was just a mentality of taking it day by day at the end of the day,” he said. “We can only control what's in front of us and what's going on that day. Just trying to improve as we got on. Just leave that loss in the past and just keep getting better. Keep going from that.”