Game-by-Game Narratives
2005

Week Six: Stony Point
Friday, October 7th

Timberwolves 14, Tigers 28

Riding an incredibly effective passing attack, the Stony Point Tigers - 15-5A’s last-place team every previous year of the school’s existence - won their second consecutive game for the first time in school history with a 28-14 win over Cedar Park on a cool Friday night in week six at Bible Stadium.

But an important point here is that these were not your father’s Tigers. Actually, considering the school’s short time in operation, we should say these were not your big brother’s Tigers.

CPHS and SPHS are exactly the same age, both having opened in 1998. While Cedar Park has enjoyed phenomenal athletic success across the board, including two unbeaten football championships, The Point has tasted nothing like that, with few winning campaigns in any sport. In football, there have been two 2-8 seasons, two 1-9 seasons, and two 0-10 seasons. Cedar Park had handily won all four previous meetings between the two programs. But now under the direction of former state champion Galena Park North Shore defensive coach Rick Chessher, it is a certainty that this will be the best team in Tiger history.

Timberwolf QB Travis Watson barks out the signals during an early Cedar Park possession. The offense ran smoothly in the first half, but would run into some tough going in the second.

Most look at any situation and decide whether they think the glass is half full or half empty. “When we got here,” said Chessher earlier this season, “the glass was broken.” To Cedar Park’s chagrin, the Tigers picked up the pieces these last two weeks after very close losses in all four of their opening games. Stony Point beat Westwood last week and now the Timberwolves to firmly establish themselves as a playoff contender, solidly in the post-season hunt at 2-1 and in sole possession of third place in the district standings.

But Cedar Park coach Chris Ross already knew that. “Stony Point is a good football team,” he told fans in his weekly meeting last Monday night at the Cedar Park cafeteria. “I think we can talk about Stony Point in terms of being a playoff-type team.” These prescient words were spoken before The Point exploded into the post-season race Friday night. “Cameron Bell is a tremendous running back, probably the best in the district,” Ross pointed out. “We have to stop him or this team can beat us.” Coach Ross was certainly justified in worrying about Bell. The Tiger halfback had run for 318 yards and three touchdowns in the win over Westwood.

But it turned out that Bell was not the catalyst for Stony Point’s win over the T’wolves. Besides a 38-yard run on a very early carry and 42 yards of clock-killing runs on the last possession of the game, Bell was limited to just 37 yards on fifteen other carries for just over two yards a run during the time the Tigers built their final 28-14 margin. While the game was on the line, Cedar Park’s Gang Green defense did what they were tasked to do with Bell.

Instead, it was the near perfect completion rate of quarterback Brandon Martin that picked apart the Timberwolves.

Tyler Smith breaks into the open on his way to a 28-yard touchdown run on Cedar Park's second play of the game. Smith had 130 yards on 17 carries and two scores against Stony Point.

The Tigers came into the game with nearly as balanced an offensive attack as you could ask for, 127 yards passing and 128 rushing per game. With the Timberwolves handling Bell better than any previous Tiger opponent, Stony Point went airborne. Martin completed twelve of fourteen passes on the night, for 270 yards and four touchdowns. He did not throw an incomplete pass until there were just four minutes left in the third quarter. His completion percentage of 85.7 was easily the best ever registered by an opposing QB against Cedar Park. The four touchdown passes against us were also a record. The 270 yards replaced the old record for most passing yards allowed in a district game – a record that was actually less than two weeks old (Chase Rich, Westwood, 267 yards).

Despite some very good performances overall throughout this season – especially against the run – the CP defense has taken some big hits in the passing game, surrendering three of the four largest aerial yardage totals in school history in the last five games.

But that’s the Jekyll-and-Hyde nature of playing with what is overall a young team working with a new system: on the one hand, two beautifully-executed shutouts. On the other, three of the largest amounts of passing yardage ever surrendered. To paraphrase a very wise man, a football season is like a box of chocolates… you never know what you’re gonna get.

Timberwolf hitting machines Tim Knicky (16) and Brandon Haug (40) put the stop to a Tiger ruinning play. Run defense was not a problem against Stony Point. The Tigers rushed for less than 3 yards a carry, and only 110 yards.

After the Tigers opened the game with a three-and-out followed by a very short punt, Cedar Park struck quickly. Quarterback Travis Watson kept on the first play for eight, then Tyler Smith shot 28 yards for the score on the Timberwolves’ second play of the game. Wes Wagener’s 53rd consecutive extra point made it 7-0 Timberwolves.

One interesting and promising pattern is that in every game but one in 2005, Cedar Park jumped out to a 7-0 lead. The sole exception is that Wagener inserted a field goal in front of the first touchdown to make the opening lead against Westwood 10-0. Of course, the bad news is that in every alternating game the opponent has overcome that early lead.

Stony Point immediately went about doing so, with a quick scoring drive of their own- 71 yards in just three plays. Martin hit an uncovered Marcus Graham for fifty yards for the score. Conrad McCue’s kick tied the game at 7.

Stony Point QB Brandon Martin (18) has just hit Conrad McCue (11), this time for just a short gain, as a pack of Timberwolves close in for the kill. Martin and McCue would hook up for two scoring passes later in the game.

Knowing of Cedar Park’s dangerous return men, McCue’s kickoff was purposefully short, setting up Cedar Park at their own 33. The T’wolves put together a nice drive of 48 yards in six plays, deftly moving the ball with the running game. nfortunately, a lost fumble at the Tiger 21 snuffed out any scoring opportunity.

There was an exchange of punts and then Stony went on another efficient drive, moving 75 yards in four plays, one of them the 38-yard run by Bell. It would be one of only two Bell runs for more than six yards until the last possession of the game. Fifteen times in his twenty-four carries, Bell would be limited to three yards or less by the Timberwolf defense. But at the end of this second Tiger scoring drive, Martin found Graham all alone again, this time for a thirteen yard touchdown with 9:48 left in the half and the kick made it 14-7. It was the first time in history that Stony Point held a lead over Cedar Park in football.

But it would last for only five minutes. The Timberwolves came out and put on an impressive offensive display of their own, methodically moving the ball downfield on the ground, going 77 yards in ten plays. Smith took it over from four yards out and Wagener’s 54th straight PAT tied the game at 14.

Daniel Dilworth takes a second-quarter kickoff at the four, with Matt Raesz starting upfield ahead of him.

Unfortunately that tie wouldn’t last long, either. The Tigers put on an even more impressive display, going 69 yards in just five plays, scoring on Martin’s third touchdown pass, this one a seven-yarder to a wide-open Trey Cox. The halftime horn cut short CP’s next possession after 16 yards.

At the break, the stats were fairly even, favoring Stony Point by about 18 yards. Cedar Park had a large time-of-possession margin, having run 25 plays to the Tigers’ 18. The Point had three long scoring drives, with the bulk of the yardage coming through the air, as did all three of their scores. Cedar Park had three drives where they’d moved the ball at will on the ground, two of them ending in rushing touchdowns. But one of them had been cut short by the fumble, and that was the difference in the game at intermission.

But there was another subtle difference, as well. Not only was Cedar Park getting burned by the Tiger passing attack, they couldn’t get the fire lit on their own. At halftime, there were zero Timberwolf passing yards on zero completions. Just the previous week, in the otherwise outstanding win over McNeil, the offense had completed the fewest passes by a Cedar Park team in a game, with just two. Against Stony Point, the T’wolves would end up three of thirteen through the air for just 23 yards. Due to the lack of aerial production, it was only the third time in school history that Cedar Park lost a game in which it rushed for over two hundred yards (227). The Timberwolf passing game has netted just 195 yards in the last four games. More than a third of that came on one play: on the 67-yard TD pass against McNeil. The passing game seemed to be in free fall on both sides of the ball.

In the middle of this conflagration is Timberwolf tailback Tyler Smith, headed right through the middle on a 4-yard TD run that tied the game at 14-14, capping a 77-yard drive with less than five minutes to go in the half. But Cedar Park would not score again.

The second half saw the Tiger defense hold Cedar Park to just forty-four yards of ball movement on four possessions. In order, the T’wolves went 25 yards on eight plays and punted, twelve yards on six plays and punted, two yards on three plays and punted, and netted five yards on six plays in their final possession as the clock ran out.

Meanwhile, the Tigers only had the ball three times in a very fast-moving second half. Two of those were very effective drives. After being forced to punt with their first possession, Stony Point put on another passing clinic and went 80 yards in eight plays, scoring on a third-and-long pass from Martin to an uncovered McCue that spanned 63 yards for the final scoring play of the night. Their last possession of the game covered 41 yards in eleven plays and effectively sealed the game by denying the T’wolves enough time to overcome the two-touchdown margin.

The Timberwolves thus fell to 3-3 overall, 1-2 in 15-5A action and now needed to take care of business themselves in their final four games plus get help from some other teams to make the playoffs.

The Stony Point offense comes to the line. They also came to life, torching the CPD for the best team pass completion percentage ever by a Cedar Park opponent.

Some bright spots for the Timberwolves….

With 250 total yards, it was the best offensive yardage production in a month. The defense’s nice handling of the rushing threat from Cameron Bell is something other teams have not generally duplicated. Once again the turnovers were kept down: only one against the Tigers, and that’s now the only one in the last two games. Tyler Smith – not Cameron Bell – was the leading rusher on the night, with 130 yards on 17 carries with two touchdowns: the best night yet for “The T”. Smith now has 459 yards in five games (he missed Ellison) and averages 6.2 yards per carry. Smith now needed 442 yards to pass the late DeMarreo Matthew for the fourth position on the all-time Cedar Park rushing list. Watson rushed effectively, as well, registering 73 yards on ten carries. Both young men averaged well over seven yards per trip.

Tiger QB Brandon Martin did a fine job of eluding the pass rush most of the evening, but here Cedar Park sack animal Tim Knicky takes his weekly feeding.

Next up would be a short trip to Round Rock. For the second year in a row, the Dragons had started out making hay while the sun shined in non-district action. In 2004, they started 3-0 and then lost six straight. In 2005, they started 2-0 and going into the game against Cedar Park had lost four straight, two of them by large margins. But historically, Round Rock has always given Cedar Park fits. In 2002 and 2003, the Dragons ultimately finished below the Timberwolves in the final standings and yet still beat them on the field. In 2004, the Timberwolves’ unbeaten district champions had to dig their way out of an unlikely 6-3 fourth-quarter deficit to take a 17-6 win.

There would be no easy games on the 2005 schedule. On any given night in district 15-5A, anyone could beat anyone. We Cedar Park fans had certainly seen that corollary proven in each of the previous three weeks.

Coach Ross has taken great pleasure in pointing out that this team of young athletes is one of the most enthusiastic and hardest-working bunch of football players he’s ever coached. This is one quality that will bear the eventual fruit they seek, both on and off the field.