Bobcat's offense stifled

SA Times - ABILENE - Seventy-six yards of total offense. Four rushing yards. One play run on the Cooper side of the field until the final 1:04 of the game. In the aftermath of Central High School's football game Friday night, it was tough for the Bobcats to decide which stat was most forgettable. One number stood out as the worst of all - zero - as in the number of points they scored.

In a season that has been a struggle for the Central offense, Friday marked a new chapter as the Bobcats lost 10-0 to Abilene Cooper on a night when their defense gave them plenty of opportunities to hand the Cougars (3-0) their first loss of the season. Central forced a whopping four first-half turnovers (a pair of interceptions by Josh Stewart and fumble recoveries by Jon Lewis and Jared Williams) by the Cougars, but the Bobcats offense couldn't turn any of those into points as their record fell to 2-2. "That ought to be enough to go win," Central head coach Steve Heryford said of the turnovers. "We have to get our offense to a point where we can go and take advantage of those things. It's nothing we don't know. It's something that's obvious to everyone that sees us play. We need to grow up as an offense."

The Cougars' only first-half score came on their second possession of the night, a dominating 16-play, 76-yard march that chewed up seven minutes of the first-quarter clock. That drive was capped by a 3-yard touchdown run by Amon Pimpton, who was hit in the backfield before breaking a pair of tackles and finding pay dirt. Pimpton ran for a game-high 134 yards, his third straight 100-yard rushing game. Isaac Escobedo's extra point gave Cooper a 7-0 lead, an advantage that looked more and more insurmountable for the Bobcats the longer the game went on. "We just really didn't execute at all today," Central running back Ryan Chadwick said.

The Cougar defense packed the line of scrimmage and dared Central to beat them through the air. The Bobcats had a season-high 72 passing yards, but most of those were too little, too late. Anthony Castillo started the game at quarterback for Central, then Tyler Jones played there for the Bobcats' final three possessions of the game. Neither could rally the Bobcats against a Cooper defense that looks vastly improved over last year's team that gave up more than 24 points nine times during the 2006 season. Central, which scored 10 points a year ago, was the lone exception on Cooper's schedule. "We're excited about the way we're playing defense right now," Cooper head coach Mike Spradlin said. "I can't say enough good things about the opportunities they are giving us."

Cooper clung to that 7-0 lead until late in the third quarter, when Escobedo gave the Cougars a little breathing room with a 22-yard field goal. Those 10 points were all the high-octane Cougars could manage on the scoreboard despite gaining 289 total yards. "We did the things we needed to do defensively to come out and win this ballgame," Heryford said. "If someone is going to run that style of offense, you can't let them make the bigs plays, and we did that." When Cooper tried for the big play, the Central defenders were there to stop them. "It feels like when you hit a home run in baseball," Stewart said of his interceptions.

Despite allowing only 10 points to Cooper, even though they were on the field most of the time, the Bobcat defenders weren't happy with their effort. "We should have shut them out, honestly," Stewart said. "We didn't do the best we could, but we did pretty dang close. "We need to start getting points on the board ourselves, not just the offense."

The Bobcats, who are averaging six points a game this season, have to start finding points somewhere with their final nondistrict game, a home contest against Odessa, looming next Friday. "We really need to turn things around," Chadwick said. "Next week is homecoming, and the offense has to show something."