Glass helps champs eke out first victory
KATY— The Katy Tigers have some growing up to do on defense two weeks into their eighth state championship follow-up.
Thanks to Deondrick Glass, they’re still hard to break.
The sophomore ran for 250 yards and five touchdowns, and quarterback Rocky Emery completed a two-point pass in the second overtime to lift Katy to a 50-49 victory over Klein Collins on Saturday night at Rhodes Stadium.
“It felt really good to pull it out,” Glass said. “I had faith in my team. I knew we would come through with the win.”
Glass ran for scores of 13 and 16 yards in overtime.
He notched touchdown runs of one, two and 56 yards the first three quarters and finished with 29 carries.
“The kid’s a warrior,” Katy coach Gary Joseph said. “He is a real fine football player. I can’t say enough about him and his efforts.
“But our offensive line is growing up, too, and that’s going to help us in the long run.”
Katy (1-1) avoided going 0-2 for the first time since 2008, rebounding from the season-opening loss to Austin Westlake.
Klein Collins fell to 1-1 in its first meeting with Katy.
“Any time you lose a football game like that, with the emotion involved in it, it’s tough,” Klein Collins coach Drew Svoboda said.
Klein Collins jumped out 3521 late in the third after a snap sailed over the head of punter Seth Small, who picked it up in the end zone and kicked it, only to see Quinton Newton return it 34 yards for a TD.
Katy rallied in the fourth on Josh Oglesby’s five-yard scor- ing run and Emery’s 31-yard TD pass to J.C. Angulo with 3:46 left in regulation.
Glass put Katy on top, 42-35, in the first overtime, but D’Anthony Doyle, who ran for 162 yards and three touchdowns, answered with a five-yard TD run — and Collins opted against going for two.
“We considered it, (but) we had so many substitutes in certain spots,” Svoboda said.
Newton, who also supplied three TDs, put Collins back on top 49-42 with a 12-yard TD run, but Glass kept his feet for a 16yard answer, and then Emery hit Masen Rivera for two points and the win.
“We’ve got some kids who persevered, fought through a lot of things, and they responded how we wanted them to respond,” Joseph said.
“I knew, either which way, we were going to go down fighting.”
Doyle ran for a pair of 52-yard touchdowns in the first half, with the first putting Klein Collins on top 7-0 early on.
Katy came back with a 13-play scoring drive for the first of five ties.
Collins scored on three of its final four possessions in the first half and took a 21-14 lead into the break.
Bryson Powers finished with 119 passing yards and 48 yards and one touchdown on the ground, helping Kein Collins rack up 376 yards, 15 first downs and, most shockingly against Katy, 49 points.
“We’re not where we need to be (defensively) right now,” Joseph said.
“We’re growing up. I knew there would be some growing pains, I just didn’t know it would be this severe.”
Katy churned out 477 yards, 17 first downs — and, more importantly, a much-needed win.
“Hopefully it built some chemistry as much as anything else,” Joseph said. “That’s what we were striving to do — try to build up a little chemistry and let them find out that they are their own team.”