Timberwolves 35, Knights 0

Chapter two of Cedar Park football history opened with all the attention-hawking stunts and explosions of the first five minutes of a James Bond movie. When the credits finally rolled, the good guys had saved the day, running up an eye-popping 35-0 score on a shocked Harker Heights team.

The brand new Timberwolf helmet logo - voted best in central Texas in an Austin American-Stateman poll - shows up well in this shot of Brandon Haug (40) and Daniel Dilworth (21) awaiting the season's first opening coin flip.

Junior quarterback Travis Watson was impressive in his debut at the helm of new Head Coach Chris Ross' flexbone
offense. Watson ran the rushing machine with panache, faking, giving, and running the team to 203 yards on the
ground, 68 of that coming on his own twelve carries. Watson also threw with great precision, hitting seven of eleven for 110 important yards and chunking three touchdown passes for emphasis.

Running back Matt Raesz caught two of those scoring passes, eight and 21 yards on his way to three receptions for 38 yards.

Junior Tyler Smith had a big catch for 39 yards and also ran ten times for 47 yards.

On his first carry of the season, Haug, at fullback, shot through a wide hole courtesy of the Cedar Park O-line. Haug scampered untouched on the play 67 yards for the season's first touchdown.

Fullback/Linebacker Brandon Haug started off the scoring after the two teams combined for six total yards on three
straight three-and-outs to open the game: one by CP and two by Heights. On the second play of Cedar Park's second possession, Haug took the ball from Watson on an inside give, busted through the middle of the line into the open, and drag-raced 67 yards untouched for the first Timberwolf touchdown of the season. Wes Wagener's 39th consecutive extra point made the score 7-0 at the 6:38 mark of the first quarter.

Heights fumbled away the kickoff return and the T'wolves were in business again at the Heights 49. Seven plays later they were in the end zone, courtesy of Watson's eight-yard toss to Raesz. The snap was high on the extra point attempt, and holder Daniel Dilworth adeptly popped up and sprinted with the ball towards the right pylon, just outracing a speeding defender for a two-point conversion. That made the score 15-0 Cedar Park with 2:18 still left in the first quarter.

The Gang Green defense repeatedly smothered Heights' top-notch QB Donnie Shorts. Here, Tim Knicky drags him down for a loss.

Heights appeared to get something going against the Gang Green defense, moving 27 yards on six plays to the Cedar Park 46, but Dilworth picked off a deflected pass from Knights quarterback Donnie Shorts and returned it to the CP 44.

The interception tied Dilworth with Jared Bunn (Class of '02) for the Cedar Park career interception record (six).
Six plays and 56 yards later, Watson hooked up with Raesz again for the 21-yard touchdown pass. Wagener's kick made it 22-0 Timberwolves with 8:43 left in the half.

After the ensuing kickoff, on first down from their own 21, the Knights' aerial attack was victimized once again. Junior Anthony Peneschi stepped in to steal another Shorts pass, and Cedar Park was good to go at the Knight 26.

CP quarterback Travis Watson made his first career start against the Knights, and performed very well, tying the school record for TD passes in a single game. Here he surveys the Heights defense.

Heights' defense finally solved the yardage monster that was the Cedar Park offense, and held the T'Wolves to just five yards in three plays. Wagener came in and calmly nailed a 38-yard field goal into a slight northwest breeze and the Timberwolves were up 25-0 with just 5:46 left in the half.

Again the Knights seemed to get something going, moving 28 yards in seven plays before being stopped on fourth down at the Cedar Park 42, one of two fourth-down stuffs by the Gang Green on the night.

With just 2:16 on the clock, the T'wolves put together an efficient 28-yard drive in six plays, with Wagener kicking a second-down field goal from 29 yards out as time expired.

Halfback Matt Raesz (20) hauls in a touchdown pass from Travis Watson as tight end Daniel Billingsley (87) looks on.

As we all tried to start breathing again, the scoreboard in this shocking season opener seemed to tell us our
Timberwolves were up by an amazing 28-0 count at the break! In the KVET broadcast booth, Voice of the Longhorns, Cedar Park resident, and Timberwolf sports banquet guest speaker Craig Way was impressed with what he and mike mate Keith Moreland had been narrating down on the field. "They look awfully good," Way told me at intermission. "Very complete. Impressive." And most of Texas was picking up their broadcast, folks.

The second half didn't seem near as flashy offensively, as Knights coach Ross Rogers made a few sound defensive
adjustments and the Timberwolves refrained from showing their hand with a four-touchdown lead. Cedar Park only
managed to move the ball 110 yards in the second half, while the Knights offense, desperate to avoid the shutout, let all the plugs out and scratched for any way to score points they could find.

They never found anything.

On the other hand, the Timberwolves did. After forcing a Knight punt with 4:58 left in the third, the Cedar Park offense cranked it up for the evening's last joy ride, a 69-yard seven-play drive that ended with Watson's three-yard scoring toss to Haug. Wagener's 42 nd consecutive extra point set the score at 35-0.

Heights' receivers paid every time they touched the ball. Here, a Knight is sandwiched between three Timbewolf defenders: Tyler Smith (5), Randy M'Maitsi (left) amd an unknown player at right.

Despite 161 yards of offensive ball movement in the second half, Harker Heights never got into the end zone. They
sniffed it once, on a long 4th quarter drive covering 80 yards in nine plays, but the Timberwolf defense came up big and stopped them on downs at the eight yard line with just under six minutes left in the game.

A short six play fourteen-yard burst ate up three minutes, then Haug got off a monster 48-yard punt that was expertly covered downfield and the Knights had 63 yards to cover in 2:30 if they were to avoid the goose-egg.

They didn't.

Out of the hold of Daniel Dilworth, Wes Wagner knocks through another extra point during a long, long streak of them.

Haug's punting was masterful, the few times Cedar Park needed him. He kicked four times for a 36.5-yard average, and it would have been greater if tactics hadn't dictated he drop a short 29-yarder inside the five early in the third quarter.

The Gang Green defense appears to have picked up where last year's 3rd-ranked 5A defense in Texas left off. In a bend-but-don't-break effort, the CPD gave up 241 yards of offense but zero points in the unit's fourth shutout in their last eleven games.

Only once did Heights get inside the Timberwolf 35, and only twice inside the 42. Haug routinely delivered hammer-blow hits on Heights' Jamaal Brooks and Donnie Shorts. He was helped by the entire defensive unit, as many players stepped up with big games. (The tackle stats are unavailable, kept only by the coaching staff.)

And so the debut of Coach Ross, the flexbone, and our new football team was a rousing success. Certainly, Heights did not play their best game, as the Timberwolves definitely benefited from some badly-timed drops of easy passes by Knight receivers, and some major penalties by both the Heights offense and defense. The Timberwolves certainly deserved the win, as they definitely showed themselves as the better team, but the 35-point margin may be somewhat deceptive.

But a 35-point margin is what goes down forever into the books.

As usual, line play was at a premium in this game, and both of Cedar Park's lines were high-octane.

The Timberwolves thus begin their season with a win for the fourth time in the school's six-plus-year football history.
They run the series with Harker Heights even at 3-3, and set the team's all-time record to 38-28 overall, 19-15 in nondistrict games, 4-3 in season openers, and 20-14 at Bible Stadium. They are now 3-1 in season-opening games at Bible, the only loss coming at the hands of none other than Harker Heights, by a 21-20 count, in 2003.

Next up would be a short trip to Hays to face the Rebels. The two teams had split their all-time series at two wins apiece prior to 2005. One odd - and perhaps portentous - fact is that the visitor had always won this game. But the Rebs were looking to be a playoff team again, and they no doubt recalled the convincing 31-7 throttling the Timberwolves laid on them at Bob Shelton Stadium for Cedar Park's first-ever playoff win last season.