Yodice: Let's see how this loss impacts St. Pius

Making the rounds after Week 7:

SARTAN FALLOUT: There was — and is — much to unpack after Saturday’s Albuquerque Academy-St. Pius matchup.

Chief among the things many of us are asking is, how did St. Pius, a team with serious state championship aspirations, manage to blow a 21-point lead, and what consequences, if any, come with this 49-36 Sartans’ loss?

“High school football, man,” St. Pius coach Curtis Flakes said Sunday.

The Sartans began Week 7 as Class 4A’s only undefeated team. St. Pius was ranked No. 2 by the coaches in the latest top-10 poll. Academy was unranked, having lost three in a row, and the Chargers gleefully stuck a knife into the side of their arch rivals with this unusual victory.

“I just told the kids, Academy is a good team, well-coached. They came out and hit us in the mouth and they beat us,” Flakes said. “Now we’ll see that response.”

It’s a short week for St. Pius, with Portales — which started 0-5 but has wins in each of its last two games — coming to Albuquerque to play the Sartans on Friday night at Milne Stadium.

And in two weeks, District 2-4A leading Chaparral is here to play St. Pius.

To be sure, the Sartans are licking some wounds after Saturday. They looked terrific the first eight minutes but were hampered by penalties, blown coverages and lingering injury/personnel package issues, among other things, in a frequently sloppy and ineffective final 40 minutes. This was no ordinary loss; this was a loss to their most hated nemesis.

“It wasn’t anything (Academy) was doing special,” Flakes said.

Can the sour aftertaste be flushed out of the system quickly? It sort of has to be, right? Flakes took this one step further. Sunday, the St. Pius coaches had a staff meeting. Flakes said every coach was asked to give one word about how they all felt.

Flakes’ word?

“Relieved,” he said.

His Sartans have been carrying a burden, he added, one they probably really didn’t need to carry, a mentality of “we have to be undefeated, we have to be perfect.”

“Our kids are carrying that pressure,” he said.

Not so much anymore.

St. Pius still controls its destiny. There are five teams in this district — Chaparral, St. Pius, Manzano, Academy and Portales — who could all win the regular season, as there remain so many crucial head-to-head meetings between all of those teams over the final four weeks.

MOVING UP THE LIST: At some point before the end of this regular season, highly accomplished Eunice senior quarterback Elijah Melancon will surpass the magical 10,000-yard plateau with the Cardinals. He sits at 9,419 yards after the Cardinals’ win Friday over Loving. The 10K will be hit sometime in the next 2-3 weeks.

He also threw three touchdown passes in the victory, and this was somewhat more significant, at least for the moment.

Melancon has tossed 136 TD passes in his four varsity seasons, and only one player in New Mexico has thrown more. That is Brett Henson of Hatch Valley, who tossed an amazing 166 from 2002-04. That ranks him fifth all-time in the country.

Melancon was tied for second prior to the Loving game; Jude Segura of Fort Sumner also was at 133.

Ironically, Melancon only recently set Eunice’s school record for TD passes. Mason Caperton had 129 from 2016-19.

SPEAKING OF: We’ve seen a handful of schools fall off the list of undefeated teams in recent weeks, teams like Cleveland, like Eunice, and now St. Pius.

There are only four remaining unbeatens among the 11-Man classes: Las Cruces (6A), Los Alamos (5A), St. Michael’s (3A) and Santa Rosa (2A). All but Los Alamos, ranked No. 6, are the top-ranked teams in their respective divisions.

CENTURY MARK: La Cueva’s Brandon Back was not the only head coach in New Mexico to hit the magical 100-victory mark in Week 7.

So did Roswell’s Jeff Lynn.

His Coyotes beat Gadsden 33-14 on Friday night.

Back achieved 100 in a 26-7 victory over Eldorado on Thursday.

The all-time coaching wins leader is the retired Eric Roanhaus, who has 335 victories as a head coach in New Mexico, all at Clovis, and 343 overall.

A REMINDER: The Week 8 schedule may strike some of you as unusual. That’s because 14 of the 16 schools in Class 5A are all on their byes this coming week.

And the only reason Miyamura and Belen are not off is because the game they had scheduled against one another two weeks ago was forced to be postponed. And Oct. 10 was the only alternative.

As I noted last year, when you have two giant, eight-team districts, a mass wave of byes is a logical way to schedule them. The only other reasonable choice would be to do it in the first three weeks of the season, and no coach wants that.

Coming out of the bye, worth noting is the Artesia-Roswell showdown on Oct. 17 at Wool Bowl.

TEAM OF THE WEEK: There was a temptation to select Academy in this spot this week. But we shall go with the Pojoaque Elks.

Pojoaque’s 32-31 overtime victory over Robertson, the third-ranked team in Class 3A by the coaches, on Friday was highly significant. Why? Because, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican, the Elks had never before beaten the Cardinals in three decades of football. (Post script: Robertson was down a large number of players, suspended for the Pojoaque game for reasons as yet unknown.)

Still, the Elks, even before this upset, have been having a nice season. They came into the Robertson game ranked No. 7. However this particular win occurred, it deserves its bouquets.