Liberty takes control in second half, posts 45-35 victory over Clovis
Nov. 13—Liberty appeared to be clicking on all cylinders in the opening 24 minutes Friday night and entered halftime with a four-point lead over Clovis.
But as it turned out, the Patriots were just getting warmed up.
After briefly losing the lead when Clovis opened the second half with a long touchdown drive, Liberty responded with perhaps its best football of the season.
The No. 4 Patriots scored 21 straight points during a seven-minute stretch to build a comfortable lead, and controlled the action thereafter in a 45-35 victory over the No. 5 Cougars in the Central Section Division I quarterfinals at Liberty.
"Our kids came out and played really hard tonight," Liberty coach Bryan Nixon said. "We're going to watch some film and try to correct some mistakes. But we're in the playoffs, we got a chance to win, so we get to move on. So we're excited about that."
Liberty (8-2) advances to play at No. 1 Clovis-Buchanan (10-1) in next week's D-I semifinals. The Bears, which defeated No. 8 Clovis North 35-3 on Friday, are ranked 16th in the state by CalHiSports.
"It's the playoffs," Nixon said. "Buchanan's a good football team so we have to go watch film and see what we need to do."
Trailing 17-13 at the half, Clovis (6-5) took its first lead of the game when quarterback Nate Johnson connected with running back Tristan Risley on a 58-yard pass play just six plays and 1:36 into the third quarter. Johnson had a big night, throwing for 253 yards on 12 of 23 passing and also rushed for a team-high 129 yards on 12 carries.
The Cougars' 20-17 advantage turned out to be short-lived — two minutes and 59 seconds to be precise.
Liberty had a quick response. Jalen Hankins busted a 30-yard run on his team's first play of the second half, moving the ball to the Clovis 35. Seven plays later, quarterback Carson Woods scored on a 4-yard run to give his team the lead for good, 24-20 with 7:25 left in the third quarter.
After forcing a Cougar punt, Jason Oliver returned the punt 23 yards, and four plays later, Hankins turned the corner and finished off a 17-yard run in the end zone to build the lead to 31-20 with 4:59 left in the third.
Luke Wattenbarger picked off a Johnson pass on Clovis' next possession, which led to another Hankins scoring run, this one from nine yards out, for a 38-20 lead on the second play of the fourth quarter.
"Our kids responded well when they took the lead," Nixon said. "Our kids came out and they never looked back. So it's pretty exciting how they came out and responded, and we move on to next week."
Clovis slowed Liberty's momentum temporarily with a touchdown and two-point conversion, but Kresean Kizzy returned the ensuing kickoff 60 yards to set up Hankins fourth touchdown run of the game. Hankins finished his final score of the night by hurdling over the pile and into the end zone for a two-yard score to build the Patriots' lead to 45-28 with 8:07 to play. Hankins finished with a game-high 146 yards rushing on 22 carries. He opened the game's scoring with a four-yard touchdown run on his team's opening possession of the game.
Wattenbarger, who also had a sack, helped get Liberty off to a quick start.
After Johnson broke free for a 89-yard touchdown run to tie the game, Wattenbarger scored on a 51-yard pass play from Woods that gave the Patriots a 14-7 lead with 47 second left in the first quarter. Woods was 11 of 15 passing for 197 yards, and also rushed for 44 yards on 10 carries.
The Cougars countered with a touchdown of their own, a 1-yard run by Risley, but the extra point was blocked by Oliver leaving Liberty ahead, 14-13. Risley had 118 yards rushing and 71 receiving yards.
"We came prepared for a dogfight and that's what we got," two-way lineman Grant Buckey said. "We just have to keep battling and don't give up, don't get down and just get in the end zone and stop them on 'D'"
The Patriots padded their lead with a 37-yard field goal by Dylan Lynch on the final play of the first half to make it 17-13 at the break.
"We had a good week of practice," Oliver said. "We knew what they were going to come out and do, we just needed to stop the run. We knew that we'd be good on our offense. We really just needed to fix the mistakes that we were making early on. Once they went up ... we had a game (two weeks ago against BHS) where we were down and we came back, so really us being down that kicked it into a different gear for us. And we started executing in all phases, and helped us push forward to have a great game."
