Santa Fe Indian School outgains Cuba 3-to-1 but is doomed by mistakes
Aug. 19—Statistics said one thing.
The scoreboard said another, and that is the bottom line in Bill Moon's book.
As Santa Fe Indian School's head coach reflected on his third season-opener with the program, Moon pointed out his Braves got nothing for controlling both sides of the ball for most of Saturday afternoon — except a 13-12 loss to the Cuba Rams at SFIS athletic complex.
Even though SFIS outgained the Rams 254 yards to 80 and the defense forced a turnover, it struggled on special teams. An 81-yard kickoff return touchdown by Nolan Elwell erased a short-lived 6-0 Braves advantage. Meanwhile, Moon said he and his coaching staff hadn't put much time in preseason practices on special teams, and the Braves failed to convert their 2-point tries after their pair of touchdowns.
Of the two situations, Moon lamented the kickoff return more than the missed 2-point attempts.
"That kickoff return was a total cluster ... " Moon said as his voice drifted. "That was the game."
Cuba also mustered enough offense for one sustained drive that led to a 3-yard touchdown by lineman Shane Willie in an unusual sequence. He took the ball out of the hands of Elwell as he extended his arms to reach the goal line and fell into the end zone for a 13-6 lead with 11:37 left in the game.
Meanwhile, SFIS overcame a rough start, in which the offense managed 10 rushing yards in its first eight tries, before plowing through the Rams defense for 193 yards over the ensuing 40 touches the rest of the game.
But the Braves only scored twice on five drives that entered Rams territory. While they scored Leonard Baldonado's touchdown runs of 14 and 17 yards, they also stranded a drive at the Cuba 10-yard line. SFIS used its ground attack on its final drive to march 36 yards, only for the drive to fizzle at the Cuba 30 when quarterback Jacoby Mendoza forgot the snap count and was not prepared for the fourth-and-7 snap.
He scrambled to his right before running out of bounds for a 1-yard loss that ended the Braves' hopes of pulling off the comeback. Moon said the final drive highlighted another area in need of improvement.
"Our audible game, when you're driving at the end of games, you need to go to the line of scrimmage and be able to audible with some authority," Moon said.
The Braves did find a foundation for their identity in the offensive line. After trying to use a split-back spread approach, SFIS offensive coordinator Kevin Hauck went back to his traditional I-formation packages, after which the offense found its rhythm.
Baldonado toted the ball 32 times for 151 yards and his two scores, while Caleb Martinez ran for 49 yards, most of them on sweeps that kept Cuba's defense on its heels whenever it tried to crash the Braves' interior line.
Moon said Cuba's advantage was that it already saw full-speed action in a scrimmage last week at Escalante. He said the Braves' season opener was their "scrimmage," which led to the slow start.
SFIS didn't have its full complement of 37 players until school began on Monday. Even then, the first two practices of the week were cut short as the players had to be in the boarding school's cafeteria by 5:30 p.m.
"We did not have our first 11-on-11 practice until Thursday," Moon said. "And then our simulation of their defense was at half-speed. They played a good game, a courageous game — something they can take some honor in.
"We gotta get time against full speed, and that's just what it is."
SFIS' road does not get any easier, as it travels Friday to fellow Class 3A foe Socorro, which is coming off a tough 28-13 loss to Las Vegas Robertson.
