When it appeared the Kerrville Tivy football team would run Medina Valley back to Castroville on Friday, the Panthers bowed their necks and made a game of it when the Antlers made the mistake of letting up on the gas pedal.
Tivy hung on to win the Class 4A Division II regional semifinal 45-31 at Heroes Stadium before a crowd of 4,903, but not before sweating out a furious rally that began with a trick play on the final play of the third quarter.
Ahead 42-10 at the half and 45-10 until running back Danny Freeman threw a 67-yard touchdown pass to Ian O’Donnell, the Antlers didn’t seal the deal until lineman Ben Ledesma’s fourth-down sack of Medina Valley quarterback Troy Stein at the Panthers’ 23 with 4:30 left.
A few plays earlier, Medina Valley missed cutting the deficit to one TD when Brett Bippert came down with a pass from Stein just inches outside the back of the end zone.
That’s how close the Panthers, who recovered three consecutive onside kicks after they cut the deficit to 45-17, came to making things even more interesting. Or, put another way, how close Tivy came to blowing it.
But as my first coach told me so long ago: It only takes one point to win.
If someone had told the Antlers before the game that they would win by 14, they would have been more than happy to accept that and move on.
“A win is a win,” said Tivy quarterback Johnny Manziel, who keyed the Antlers’ first-half outburst. “We won and that’s what counts. It feels great to win. I give Medina Valley a lot of credit. They hung in there and kept coming.”
Stein scored on runs of 1 and 5 yards after Barrett Haby and Freeman recovered the Panthers’ first two onside kicks. His second score cut Tivy’s lead to 45-31 with 6:43 left.
“He was everywhere,” Manziel said of Stein, who also played safety on defense. “He did a great job.”
After David Wurzbach recovered Medina Valley’s third onside kick at the Tivy 39, the Panthers moved to the 13 before they found themselves facing a fourth-and-18 at the 21. That’s when Ledesma, only 5-foot-6 and 185 pounds, slammed the door on the rally.
Tivy head coach Mark Smith looked as relieved as he did happy after the game.
“We let them back in,” Smith said. “We were in control until they hit that big pass play at the end of the third quarter. It was a snowball effect and we didn’t handle it very well. I think we learned a lesson about finishing games.”
Tivy (8-4) will play the Austin McCallum-Port Lavaca Calhoun winner in the state quarterfinals at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Heroes Stadium. McCallum plays Calhoun at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Alamodome.
Medina Valley, which never had won a 4A playoff game until this season, finished 11-2.
“We dug ourselves a hole and it was too hard for us to climb out of it,” Panthers head coach Brian Emerson said. “The kids did a good job of making a run, but they just ran out of gas.”
Said Stein: “I don’t think we came out flat in the first half, but we just couldn’t get rolling. At halftime, I told the guys that we were going to come out and play a second half that we would remember for the rest of our lives.”
In a game of markedly different halves, Tivy dominated the first behind the play of Manziel and a defense that limited Stein to three yards rushing and 15 passing.
In contrast, Manziel completed 14 of 19 passes for 251 yards and two TDs, and ran for two TDs in the first half. His scoring runs covered 4 and 12 yards, and he had scoring strikes of 29 yards to running back Sonny Guzardo and 32 yards to wide receiver Andy Kinnison.
The pass to Kinnison, combined with the fifth of six successful extra-point kicks by Sergio Delgado, put the Anthers ahead 35-10 with 2:58 left in the half.
The Tivy offense’s other first-half TD came on a 4-yard run by Mikhail Ironside that capped the game’s first possession.
Tivy’s onslaught continued on the first play of Medina Valley’s next possession 12 seconds later, when Daniel Mohnke scored on an 18-yard fumble return.
The Panthers drove to the Tivy 30 on their first possession of the second half, but linebacker Wyndham Burney snuffed out the drive with an interception at the 20.
When Tyler Thompson’s 48-yard field goal extended the Antlers’ lead to 45-10 with 13 seconds left in the third quarter, you almost could hear the Tivy buses warming up.
Then came the play that ignited the Panthers’ comeback.
With the ball at the Medina Valley 33 and only four seconds left in the third period, Stein threw a lateral pass to Freeman, who then passed to a wide-open O’Donnell for the 67-yard TD.
The Panthers hogged the ball after that, keeping Manziel on the sideline until Ledesma’s sack gave the Antlers their first possession of the fourth quarter.
“That’s what we wanted to do coming in, keep him off the field as much as possible,” Emerson said. “I wish we had been able to do more in the first half.”
Manziel finished with 313 total yards, completing 17 of 25 passes for 274 yards and running for 39 yards. But he had only 30 total yards in the second half, a reflection of how successful Medina Valley was in keeping him off the field.
Stein completed 10 of 25 passes for 143 yards and one TD, a 10-yard strike to Bippert, and was intercepted three times. He ran for only 25 yards on 11 carries.
Jacob Tucker led the Panthers’ ground game with 122 yards on 20 carries.
Medina Valley’s other score came on a 24-yard field goal by Lucas Recio, who also converted four extra-point kicks.
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