Game-by-Game Narratives
2004

Week Fourteen: Lufkin (Region II Finals)
Saturday, December 4th - at Waco ISD Stadium

Who would have thought, just three months earlier, slinking along at 0-2, that Timberwolf football would postpone our Christmas shopping raids? Here it was December, just three weeks and a day before Christmas, and Cedar Park was still playing football.

But the team they faced that cool cloudy day would be unlike any other they’d seen. The Lufkin Panthers – “The Pack” – were the second-ranked team in Texas and the ninth-ranked team in the United States. They’d earned that lofty rating on the strength of their A&M-bound monster back, 242-pound Javorskie Lane, and a big and very fast defense. To advance to the state semifinals against the nation’s number one ranked team in Southlake Carroll, Cedar Park would have to play even better than the best they’d played so far.

That was not an impossible order. The one direct comparison between the two teams were their games with Pflugerville, and Cedar Park had handled that group of Panthers far easier than had Lufkin. So it was not out of the realm of possibility that the Timberwolves might come home with yet another stunning win. But Lufkin was stocked with talent, attitude, and deep-round playoff savvy. Even their coach’s name – John Outlaw – sounded ominous.

And certainly, expecting a third straight playoff game in which the Timberwolves jumped out to a 7-0 lead on the second play of the game was pure nonsense, wasn’t it?

Lo and behold, on the game’s second snap, there went Rupert Edwards off left tackle through a huge hole blown open by the O-line. He skipped to the near sideline and whooshed downfield as every green-and-black-clad fan sprang to their feet simultaneously. Could it be? Could Cedar Park start off this game with a solid right to the solar plexus as they had in the Copperas Cove and Mesquite wins?

Not this time. Edwards was chased down inside the 25 after a 57-yard run, a play that would turn out to be longest of the game for Cedar Park. The Timberwolves were stopped short of field goal range on that drive, but too close to punt. A fourth-down pass went incomplete and Lufkin trotted out their heavy-duty diesel-powered offense. A long touchdown drive resulted – the first initial drive to score points on Cedar Park since the season opener. Quarterback Jacovey Smallwood found wideout Dez Bryant in the end zone and the T’wolves were looking at their first deficit since the playoffs began.

One last time, as had been true all season, when faced with a deficit, the Cedar Park offense immediately responded in kind. A beautiful 80+ yard drive of their own ended with a nice Korey Washington scamper for 25 yards and the tying score. But that would turn out to be the last touchdown – and the last points – the best team in Cedar Park history would ever score.

From that point late in the first quarter onward, we flat-out got beat. Almost a perfect loss; the kind you can live with, where a team is just better than you and proves it. By the end of the day Cedar Park was on the short end of a 24-7 score.

There were certainly some positives. Ten of Lufkin’s points were scored in the last six minutes or so to butter up the final margin a bit for the national polls. It was only 14-7 in the middle of the fourth quarter, and literally anything could have happened to a seven-point margin. In actuality, our defense did a great job, but where we lost it was in having to face the outstanding Pack defense.

After storming to 199 yards and ten first downs in the first half, during which the shortest Cedar Park possession went for 52 yards, and during which CP never punted, only stopping themselves with missed passes and a turnover, the T’wolves came out in the second half and were shut down. Lufkin either traded out their guys at halftime for the Southern Cal defense or…who knows. Whatever the case may be, they were a much speedier defense in the second half, flying to the ball quicker than anyone we’d faced. They held Cedar Park to just 42 yards and one first down after intermission. That was the game-deciding stat, and an impressive one.

On the other side of the ball, our own defense did a tremendous job on Javorskie Lane, who had 17 carries for 103 yards, 59 of that (almost sixty percent of his total) coming on one touchdown run up the middle during the second quarter. Outside of that carry, our guys held this huge Panzer tank of a running back to just 44 yards on sixteen other carries- just 2.75 yards per run. Not too shabby, considering the quality defenses over which he’d been running roughshod. And overall, of Lufkin’s 273 total yards of offense, they got 124 of it – nearly half – on just three of their 48 plays: Lane’s 59-yard run, a 35-yard halfback option touchdown pass, and a 32-yard run by their quarterback after escaping what seemed to be a sure hit for a loss (these final two coming late in the fourth quarter). So, Lufkin managed just 3.31 yards per play for 149 yards on 45 of their 48 snaps. They got 110 of their 274 total yards on their last two meaningful possessions of the game (the last possession was their JV team losing yardage and punting). Considering they moved 70 yards on a game-opening TD drive, this means that the CPD held the nation’s ninth-ranked team to just 94 yards on the eight possessions between their first one and their last two. And then ponder that 59 of that came on one play! Astounding defense, in the final analysis. The Pack was also aided in the field-position game by an unlikely 30-yard fumble advance by Lane during their fourth quarter field goal drive. (These yards were erroneously attributed to his rushing total in many publications. This is actually tracked as return yardage.)

And so the remarkable 2004 Cedar Park football season came to a close. The final game was certainly yet another stellar effort by the defense. It’s unfortunate for our fellows that the margin bears little resemblance to the actual flow of events. Cedar Park was ready to take this game over right up until a fumble at the Lufkin seventeen when the T’wolves were about to go in and tie it at 14-all in the third quarter, at a point where Cedar Park still held significant margins in total offense, first downs, and time-of-possession. From that turnover, their fortunes started downhill.

Yes, the Panthers were a whole lot bigger than us, but that didn’t matter. They were no bigger than Mesquite or Copperas Cove or Pflugerville. Everyone we played this year had a significant size advantage over our hard-working bunch of suburban kids. Where Lufkin differed from other teams we’d faced is their incredible speed on defense. We’d actually played better offenses (and stopped them, too). But the Panthers won this game by neutralizing our customary speed advantage in the running game. Neither Edwards nor Washington could get around the corners to ignite their afterburners outside.

There are some regrets, though. There’s the heartbreaking fact that Lufkin fumbled four times and we didn’t cover any of them (they even advanced one thirty more yards). We had hands on five Lufkin passes but only intercepted one of them, that one a key grab in Panther territory by Daniel Dilworth that gave Cedar Park the chance to tie it at 14 in the third. Coming away with one turnover out of a possible nine is painful to ponder. We turned it over twice, both very deep in Lufkin territory. One was the fumble mentioned earlier, and the other was at the end of a 65-yard drive that culminated with an interception in the end zone to close the first half.

There were other “could-have-beens”. In the second quarter, Tim Emmons ran a great pattern that sprung him loose fifteen yards behind everybody at the Lufkin thirty, on a dead sprint for the goal line, but the wind-aided throw was two yards past his grasp. That pass goes our way, and we’re at 14-14 in the second half when we fumbled instead of trailing 14-7. Strategies and tactics would have been completely different at that point.

Dilworth’s interception was the last of the season for the Gang Green. A record-breaking fifteen of them were produced by six players. Dilworth came on strong at the end of the year, ending up leading the team with five picks: a new school record for individual interceptions in one season.

Despite Lufkin’s great defense – clearly the best Cedar Park faced all year – the Timberwolves still got over 200 yards rushing. The defeat marks the only time in history that Cedar Park has lost a game when achieving that particular milestone.

All through this string it was said that the team that beats Cedar Park will have to do one thing, and then depend on luck for another: 1) they’d have to be fast enough on defense to stop the Timberwolf ground game and put CP in a situation where the T’wolves have to throw more often than they want to, and 2) they’ll have to hope the Cedar Park passing game is off that particular day, as it turned out to be from time to time. This is exactly what happened in Waco.

Thus, 11-3 would be the final record, with an eleven-game win streak sandwiched between opening and closing losses. The TSRN poll issued the following Monday paid the Timberwolves great respect, even in defeat: Cedar Park stayed in the Top Ten at 10th. It was another achievement of much distinction to end a season full of them.