In the end, the West Plains Wolves made their statement, but didn’t quite get all they wanted.
After winning some postseason shootouts, West Plains basked in the rare air of the Class 4A Division I state semifinals against traditional power Celina at Shotwell Stadium. The Wolves still had a shot with over 30 seconds left in the game, but a longshot fourth down came up short in a 43-36 loss.
West Plains (11-4) can no longer catch anybody by surprise after only three seasons as a varsity program, as the Wolves have advanced one round further than the season before in each of the last two seasons.
That explains why they weren’t overwhelmed by the situation when it came down to it in the biggest game in program history.
“I thought up until the very end we were going to win the game,” West Plains coach Adam Cummings said. “That’s just the belief we have in our kids. I think we were right where we wanted to be. We’d been in those kinds of battles before and we felt the advantage was to us on those situations. Credit to Celina, they’re a great football team.”
Whether West Plains can be called “great” yet is still up for debate, but the Wolves have definitely put themselves in the discussion. They reached the state semis by beating another Texas high school grid blueblood, Stephenville, 42-35 a week earlier.
This game was almost exactly similar to that one in terms of score, but the opposite in results. The Wolves were the ones stopped this time.
In a game which lived up to the hype offensively, West Plains took a 36-35 lead with 2:34 remaining in the game on a 14-yard run by sophomore Slade Russell, his third touchdown run of the game.
The way Celina (15-0) was playing offensively, it looked as if the Wolves might have left the Bobcats a little too much meat on the bone.
“We knew we had to stay in a rhythm offensively and we had timeouts left so it was that fine balance of getting out of rhythm to score on the last possession or put it in and see what happens,” Cummings said.
Celina’s Harrison Williams made that a moot point by running for his second touchdown of the fourth quarter from 22 yards out, and a two-point conversion gave Celina 43-36 lead with 1:29 left in regulation. That was still time enough for West Plains to mount on final flurry.
“I really feel like our offense would be able to respond the way we’ve done things all year,” Celina coach Bill Elliott said. “We didn’t want to score too quick, but the defense did a great job there at the end to get a stop.”
The Wolves took over at their own 30 on the ensuing kickoff, and Reid Macon hit Lawson Betancourt for a 23-yard gain to put West Plains in Celina territory. But after two incompletions, Macon was sacked for a seven-yard loss and the Wolves faced a near impossible fourth-and-17.
Macon tried to hit Kane White-Tinsley on the far sideline, but the pass fell incomplete in double coverage, and the Bobcats had their place in next week’s state championship game.
“The O-line was doing a great job blocking up front all night,” said Macon, who had another stellar postseason game, completing 22-of-24 passes for 256 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. “We did what we were asked to do, it just didn’t turn out our way. It was a one-read play and they covered it. We just couldn’t get it done.”
Celina lived up to its reputation early by scoring two quick touchdowns. But West Plains didn’t blink, taking bold risks in the second quarter, tying the game on the final play of the half to go into the locker room knotted at 14.
After Bentley’s second touchdown, though, the Wolves came to life offensively. They converted a fourth down on a 75-yard scoring drive, culminating in Russell’s 5-yard run which made it 14-7.
The Bobcats appeared ready to answer that score and drove down inside the West Plains 10-yard line on the next possession. But two holding penalties set them back, and Bentley threw an ill-advised pass into the end zone which Kane White-Tinsley intercepted and returned to the West Plains 18.
Three times on the ensuing drive the Wolves went for it fourth down and three times it paid off. But the ultimate gamble came with two seconds left in the half and the ball at the Celina 7, when Macon hit White-Tinsley in the corner of the end zone as time expired, and Gipson Gnagy’s extra point tied it at 14-14.
“I think as a staff we felt we were going to need to do the same thing as last week,” Cummings said. “We were going to have to steal some possessions and have some luck. I just kept rolling the dice as much as I could and I finally crapped out. The reality is I had faith in our coaches and kids to execute.
“It makes the decision a lot easier to do than it might seem.”
The Wolves were able to double up in the second half, as they got the second half kickoff and kept the ball for 6 minutes and 42 seconds before settling for a 33-yard field goal by Gnagy that gave them their first lead, 17-14.
That lasted barely over two minutes. Celina answered with a march down the field, as Bentley scored his third touchdown from four yards out to give the Bobcats a 21-17 lead.
Celina then made one of the game’s rare defensive stops as the Wolves turned the ball over on downs on the ensuing possession. Early in the fourth quarter Williams, who had 120 yards on 12 carries, scored on a 16-yard run to make it 28-17, which only began the fun in the fourth quarter in which the two teams combined for 41 points.
But the Wolves responded with two touchdowns, the first one a 3-yard pass from Macon to Kaden Hooker, to briefly reclaim the lead before Celina’s game-winning drive.
Inside the box score
West Plains and Celina were dead even in this contest in a lot of areas.
The Bobcats finished the game with 435 total yards to the Wolves 432. Celina’s damage came on the ground chewing up 320 of those 432 yards from the run game. West Plains saw more of a passing attack thanks to 256 yards from quarterback Reid Macon.
Celina had 25 first downs to West Plains 22. There was only one punt in this contest, one turnover by Celina and 12 total penalties, eight of which came by the Bobcats.