Baca leads Bucs to win over PG
PITTSBURG, Texas—Pittsburg quarterback Brian Baca threw for two touchdowns and ran for two more to make his brother’s head coaching debut a resounding success with a 35-19 win over a young but resilient Pleasant Grove team Friday night at Pirate Stadium.
Baca hit on 11 of 17 passes for 236 yards. His last strike was the final nail in PG’s coffin, a 21-yarder to D.J. Porter on fourth-and-11 with 4:22 left in the game to kill a Hawk rally engineered by backup quarterback Carson Cox.
Playing in the place of senior quarterback— and team captain—Jacob Smith, who left the game with an injured knee in the first quarter, the sophomore brought the Hawks back from a 22-point deficit to make it a nine-point game headed into the final stanza.
That’s when Baca stepped it up a notch. He led the Pirates on a seven-play, 69-yard drive, capped by a 20-yard strike to Red Shields to extend the Pirate lead to 28-13.
Cox and the Hawks answered with an 11-play, 63-yard march to pull within 28-19 with 5:40 left on the clock. It would have been a one-score
game at that point, but Pittsburg blocked the point-after try, the Pirates’ second blocked PAT of the night.
Baca then engineered the Pirates’ final scoring drive. He followed his fourth-down heroics with a three-yard scoring plunge to put the game away and give big brother Brad Baca a 1-0 record.
Cox wound up hitting on three of eight passes for no interceptions and 53 yards. Junior tailback DeVuntay Walker ran for 94 yards and a TD on 11 carries, fullback Logan Wesley chipped in 57 yards and a score on 15 tough carries up the middle, and Keshawn Jones had 64 yards and a TD on 11 carries.
Pittsburg tailback Tray Walker had a solid night, running for 95 yards and a score and catching two passes for 70 yards and another TD.
The Pirates got on the the board early less than two into the contest when Baca sneaked it in from three yards out. The score was set up when the senior signal caller hit Deldric Shields with a 50-yard bomb on the Pirates first possession.
Baca found Damien Porter in the flat for the two-point conversion.
The Bucs got on the board again in the first quarter when Tray Walker burst up the middle from the 19, bounced off a linebacker, spun to his right and drove a safety across the line. Alex Rodriguez’s point-after made it 15-0 with 4:20 still on the first quarter clock.
Pittsburg stretched its lead to 22 midway through the second quarter, when Baca and DeJour Dowell put on a passing clinic. First, Baca hit Dowell with a swing pass that the junior wideout carried 28 yards to the Hawk 40. On the next play, Baca hit Dowell in stride on a post route behind the secondary for six.
Walker got Pleasant Grove on the board by taking a jet sweep around the right side of the Pittsburg defense for 67 yards and a score with 3:01 remaining in the half. Dalton Hinton’s kick was good, and the teams went into the locker rooms with Pittsburg ahead, 22-7.
Early in the third quarter, PG put together a 7-play, 92-yard drive that was capped by bursts of 23 and six yards by Walker.
That seemed to ignite the Hawk defense, which forced a three-andout, but Baca helped Pittsburg regain the momentum with the back-to-back scoring drives to close the contest.
Before the game, Pittsburg saluted former NFL all-pro Homer Jones. The Pittsburg native, who played for the New York Giants and Cleveland Browns, is credited with inventing the touchdown spike move.