All four quarterfinals in the Class 3A football state playoffs were played at the same time on a busy Saturday afternoon.
At the end of the statewide frenzy, the semifinals in the classification were set. No. 1 Roosevelt will play No. 5 Mead and No. 3 Fort Morgan will take on No. 2 Lutheran.
(1) Roosevelt 51, (8) Holy Family 33
JOHNSTOWN – You have to have a special kind of nasty to play offensive line.
And with a name like Anthony Munoz, you might be born to play the position. Roosevelt junior Anthony Munoz — whose NFL Hall of Fame namesake was a stud at tackle for 13 Pro Bowl seasons in Cincinnati with the Bengals — has quite the icon to model his game after, and on Saturday in the Class 3A quarterfinals at Peterson Field he and his line mates had their way with the Holy Family Tigers.
The top-seeded and unbeaten RoughRiders controlled the line of scrimmage all day, never punted and scored on all but one drive all day en route to a 51-33 victory over the Tigers to advance to next Saturday’s semifinals against Mead, a 14-13 winner in Durango on Saturday afternoon. Roosevelt beat the Maverick 37-7 in early October.
“This is what we do, just come out, grind and work hard,” said Munoz, whose team beat Holy Family 49-7 in their season opener. “I feel like that helped a lot. It was a lot of the same people.”
After back-to-back defensive stands to open up the game, the second of which came after Holy Family’s Dominic Gabriel intercepted Brock Saya, the Riders started to find their groove offensively. Munoz and Co. gave Saya all sorts of protection and time to throw the ball and were equally as efficient opening up holes for Cooper Walton to run through.
Roosevelt (12-0) scored twice in the final five minutes of the first quarter — Tucker Peterson on a 29-yard reception from Saya and a six yard run from Walton — and had Holy Family in a 14-0 hole that they were never able to dig themselves out of.
“It is not easy playing a team a second time and if you are going to make a deep run in the playoffs, good teams find a way to face each other again, and that’s Holy Family,” Roosevelt coach Lane Wasinger said. “We prepared for them like we prepare for everybody and that is just a whole new opponent. I’m proud of our kids for coming out and fighting and putting the first week behind them and focusing on getting this win today.”
Said Holy Family coach Mike Gabriel, whose team finished 7-5: “We can’t be two scores down and try and play from behind. You just can’t match score for score when you are two scores down. Our kids fought hard and (Roosevelt) has a good program. They are not undefeated for nothing.”
Holy Family cut the lead in half early in the second quarter when sophomore quarterback Rylan Cooney connected with Tyler Stevens for a 28-yard score, but that would be as close as the Tigers would get the rest of the way.
It took just nine seconds late in the second quarter for Roosevelt to turn a tight game into a three score deficit. After Saya would go in from 1-yard out and the ensuing kickoff, the first play Holy Family ran turned into a 41-yard pick six from senior linebacker Jaden Casanueva, and 14-7 turned into 29-7.
“We put a lot of weight on our offensive line and they carry us as a football team,” Wasinger said. “Whether we are running the ball or in pass protection, Anthony Munoz and Mathew Roles are a big part of that unit. It’s a brotherhood up there and they have done a great job week in and week out of understanding their assignments, making checks and working as a unit. That allowed us to move the ball pretty effectively today.”
Saya was pinpoint all day, tossing two touchdown passes to Peterson and running for the other. Walton also scored twice for the Riders.
(5) Mead 14, (4) Durango 13
No matter the seeds or how many seniors the defending champions may have graduated, it’s never easy to knock off the reigning champs on the road.
But the No. 5 Mead football team did exactly that on Saturday, toppling the No. 4 seed and defending Class 3A champion Durango Demons in a 14-13 thriller of a quarterfinal.
“It’s a great day to be a Mead Maverick in Durango, Colorado,” Mavericks head coach Jason Klatt told the ColoradoPreps Scoreboard Show. “It was one of the most gutsy performances I’ve seen out of our kids and our coaches were awesome. It was the most gritty performance I’ve seen from a Mead football team. They were determined today, we had something brewing from the kickoff and we just new we had something special in us today.”
Mead scored first on a 2-yard run by Sean Medlock and that lead held up until the Demons tied the game in the third quarter. The Mavericks pulled ahead again late in the third quarter and early in the fourth, Durango went for two to try to take the lead but the Mavericks defense stopped the try.
After the game, Klatt credited the Mead offensive line for allowing the team to extending drives and keeping the Durango offense off the field, particularly late in the game. The Mavericks have now won two games by one point apiece in the postseason.
“I just think it’s a mentality. We’ve been really getting better in practice and we’ve seen it for a couple week’s now,” Klatt said. “We’ve seen this group really start to focues in and take on the mentality that they’re not going to give the ball back to the other team.”
Searching for an opportunity to play for the school’s first football title, Mead will take on No. 1 Roosevelt in the semifinals. The Mavericks lost 37-7 to Roosevelt during the regular season.
(3) Fort Morgan 21, (6) Frederick 14
The Fort Morgan football team in back in the state semifinals for the first time since 2015, and it took the Mustangs a hard-fought victory and a late defensive stop to get back there.
Up a single touchdown late in the fourth quarter of a quarterfinal matchup with No. 6 Frederick on Saturday, No. 3 Fort Morgan halted a would-be tying drive by intercepting a pass with under a minute left to play. The Fort Morgan defense, which is allowing just 15.7 points a game, ending a low-scoring affair with a timely turnover was a fitting way for the Mustangs to advance to the semifinals.
“A phenomenal effort,” Davies told the Colorado Preps Scoreboard Show. ” Our D-Coordinator, Coach Langford, did such a great job of putting our kinds in a position to succeed today.”
“I told the kids that this is a special group and it’s only fitting that we’d be practicing on Thanksgiving Day,” he added.
(2) Lutheran 49, (7) Palisade 7
The Lutheran football team has scored over 35 points in every game this season and the Lions made sure not to have a scoring team against a dangerous Palisade team in the Class 3A quarterfinals on Saturday afternoon.
Hosting the No. 7-seed Bulldogs, the No. 2 Lions amassed an incredible 42 points in the first quarter and cruised to a 49-7 victory and a matchup with No. 3 Fort Morgan in next week’s semifinals.
“Our kids were just ready to go and they believed,” Lutheran head coach Stephen Robbins told the Colorado Preps Scoreboard Show. “We talked about playing fast and playing hard and trying to get up on people as fast as we can. That’s what we were able to do today. They have a really good offense, they’re very disciplined and they want to hold the ball as much as they can. So that was part of our gameplan to come out fast and take them out of that.”
The Lutheran football team will be making its first semifinal appearance since 1999.