Yodice: Did Las Cruces' win over Cleveland offer us clarity in 6A football?

So what do we know about Class 6A football today that none of us knew three days ago?

Tantalizing question.

Unfortunately, the answer is rather mundane.

We don’t know anything new about 6A football today that wasn’t already widely accepted before last weekend.

Las Cruces’ exciting 38-34 win at Cleveland on Friday night was, in short, great stuff. It had everything you’d want in a meeting of No. 1 (Cleveland) vs. No. 2 (Las Cruces).

The game’s playmakers balled out, the teams traded a few leads in the second half, the game went down to the final minute — all with lofty regular-season stakes. These are elements you usually associate with a dynamic showdown. Which this was. It was just about as good as it gets for any regular-season game.

But, truth be told, Las Cruces, which impressively kept its collective head about it even facing a road deficit as large as 14 points, winning this game was not, in and of itself, surprising.

Not one bit. The Bulldawgs were, and are, plenty formidable enough to take down any 6A team.

Now, psychologically, the result surely carried more weight to the teenagers wearing Las Cruces white jerseys than it did the lads from Cleveland.

On that note, I must admit the following piece of information surprised me — Las Cruces had never, not once, beaten Cleveland in a regular-season game until Friday night. And these two have met plenty.

“I’m super proud of those dudes,” Las Cruces coach Mark Lopez said.

The only victory the Bulldawgs had in this series occurred in the 2016 state semifinals.

Naturally, Las Cruces did not need to beat Cleveland to prove its worthiness as a 2025 championship contender. But it sure doesn’t hurt, either.

If you’re Cleveland, well, this loss is going to linger for a while, I’d imagine, and it certainly was a frustrating setback. There was one play in particular, a play Cleveland believed was a fumble (and it definitely looked that way from the press box) that was apparently whistled dead. Instead of the Storm getting great field position on the Cruces side of the field, the Bulldawgs retained the ball and scored a touchdown themselves. Huge swing.

You better believe Cleveland will be holding on tight to that should these two teams share a field again this year.

Cleveland’s 15-game winning streak ended Friday. The school’s last defeat came in the 2024 opener, also at home, to Centennial, and the Storm, fueled by that loss, found another couple of gears en route to their state championship.

Interestingly, the MaxPreps 6A rankings (which include updated records) haven’t changed, at least not as of 7 p.m. Sunday. Cleveland remains No. 1, Las Cruces No. 2, and that duo has a huge gap over the teams ranked 3 and 4, Centennial and La Cueva.

The new 6A coaches’ poll will be out early this week, we’ll see how that looks.

For now, the two teams I believed to be 6A’s two best remain just that. Nothing has changed.

Neither has this: it’s going to take something special for someone to interrupt a Las Cruces-Cleveland postseason rematch.

AN 88 BURGER: No score among the 11-Man ranks jumped off the page in Week 4 like this one:

Eunice 88, Morton, Texas 36.

Can’t recall a team with that kind of output since La Cueva’s 89 against West Mesa three years ago.

“It was crazy,” Cardinals coach Greg Jackson said. The game was 50-36 at halftime.

The 124 points makes this one of the top 10 highest-scoring games (combined points) in the state’s history, according to the New Mexico Activities Association website, which charts state records. The first nine games on that top 10 all involve one New Mexico team against another New Mexico team. The 10th includes Montrose, Colorado and Aztec.

Eunice quarterback Elijah Melancon and running back Greyson Meek combined for 355 rush yards, six touchdowns and seven 2-point conversions.

Melancon’s two touchdown passes put him at 131 for his brilliant career. Three more and he’ll own second place alone on the state’s list of touchdown passes in a career. The overall record is 166, so Melancon is 35 behind Brett Henson of Hatch Valley.

All of this sets the table for what might be, on paper, the single most fascinating Week 5 matchup, with Eumice, ranked No. 2 in Class 2A, visiting 3A’s top-ranked St. Michael’s.

They play at 1 p.m. Saturday in Santa Fe.

“It’s a heavyweight fight,” Jackson said. “As much as you can get in small-school football. Some of the best small-school football that you’ll ever see this year.”

BROWN AND GOLD: Cibola is off to a terrific 3-1 start, and the Cougars already have more wins this year than they had all of last season. This most certainly looks like a playoff-caliber team. They visit Clovis this coming weekend.

The only loss came on opening night, when Albuquerque High scored with under 40 seconds left to beat Cibola 24-21. The Cougars had the ball with a couple of minutes left, but couldn’t secure a game-clinching first down.

“That first game,” coach David Howes said, “we learned a lot. … We learned a lot from that failure.”

Cibola followed with wins over Sandia, Eldorado and, most recently, Carlsbad.

“This team is bonding and jelling and overachieving,” Howes said. “That’s something we did in (2019) when I was at Rio Rancho (and we reached the state championship game). I’m not comparing the two teams, I’m just saying (both) found their way.”

ISAIAH CARPENTER UPDATE: St. Pius, ranked No. 2 in Class 4A, saw its outstanding junior quarterback, Isaiah Carpenter, go down Thursday night against Organ Mountain with an injury to his throwing (right) shoulder.

Sartans coach Curtis Flakes III said he couldn’t be sure when Carpenter would return.

St. Pius is on its bye week and then faces a difficult district-opening test, a road trip at No. 4 Silver.

THIS AND THAT: Cobre for- feited its game against rival Silver last week.

Indians coach Jerry Martinez said the program was down to just 26 players, and almost half of them (12) are freshmen.

So, the school made the decision to forfeit to the Colts, he said, out of safety concerns. Cobre and Silver are only separated by a few miles; it’s that region’s equivalent of Los Lunas-Belen, who don’t play each other in football anymore.