Bloomfield smothers No. 1 Pius
Fifth-seeded Bobcats intercept five passes to win 4A semifinal game
That stellar St. Pius defense did all it could. But even it was unable to prevent this.
Bloomfield intercepted five passes thrown by Sartans backup quarterback Jacob McCoy as the Bobcats advanced into the Class 4A football championship game with a 15-6 state semifinal victory over No. 1 St. Pius on Saturday afternoon at Nusenda Community Stadium.
It is Bloomfield’s first appearance in a title game since 1990.
“They’ve been waiting a little while too long,” said Bloomfield junior running back Vincent Marquez, who scored both Bobcat touchdowns.
The Bobcats (9-4) will visit No. 3 Taos at 1 p.m. Saturday. The Tigers (11-1) went on the road and swamped No. 2 seed Portales on Saturday, 35-14, as Taos advanced to its first football final.
Bloomfield’s defense, which has given up just 32 points in the last four games, carried the day Saturday.
“I couldn’t be more thrilled for our community,” said Bloomfield coach Bob Allcorn, “and everyone who has supported us and been behind us.”
It was a terribly bittersweet day for the Sartans (8-4), who lost their starting quarterback, junior Derek Rivera, to a broken leg on the same field a week ago against Kirtland Central in the quarterfinals. And was he ever missed.
In his absence, St. Pius generated a mere 113 yards of offense — and 55 of those came on the Sartans’ only touchdown. St. Pius averaged 1.2 yards per play on its other 48 snaps.
“It’s tough,” St. Pius coach David Montoya said. “I don’t want to take anything away from Bloomfield, because they’re a good team. We just needed to be a little more consistent, and we weren’t.”
St. Pius turned the ball over six times. McCoy and Trebor Toledo were rotating at QB for the Sartans in the first half, with Toledo mostly handing the ball off and McCoy doing the throwing.
Eventually, it was just McCoy, since the St. Pius ground game was nonexistent, finishing with 11 yards on 18 attempts.
And with only a few days to integrate McCoy into the offense with the first team, the results were almost predictably sloppy. Ray Alcantar had three of Bloomfield’s five interceptions, Bryce Perez the other two.
And yet, this game was only 8-6 at halftime.
On the second drive of the first quarter, Bloomfield went 47 yards for a score, and Marquez went over from the 2. There was a bad snap on the PAT. Quarterback Rogelio Gonzales was the holder, picked up the ball, scrambled, then threw back across the field and completed a 2-point conversion pass.
At one point in the second quarter, St. Pius had only one more yard (five) than punts (four).
But the Sartans struck right before the half, with McCoy making a fine pass to Isaiah Griffin, whose double move left him open and able to convert a 55-yard touchdown on a third-and-20. A 2-point pass failed.
There was little going on in the third quarter, although in the late stages Bloomfield pounced on a St. Pius fumble. The Bobcats started a drive from the Sartans’ 28, and Marquez took a pitch and scored from the 1 moments later, on the first play of the fourth quarter. The all-important PAT gave Bloomfield a two-score cushion.