FRIDAY NIGHT BREAKDOWN: DV comes out fired up, defense takes care of rest

Their toes tapped the ground. Chinstraps buttoned and hands shaking, the Desert Vista football team sat silently on its bus in the Mountain Pointe parking lot. Just waiting.

Four minutes - four agonizing minutes - passed. Not a word. Three more.

Then, DV coach Dan Hinds emerged at the bus’ door: “You ready, men?”

Boy, were they ever.

The Thunder had already warmed up at their home field, watched a scene from Gladiator, then bused over to Centennial Middle School where they’d waited for five minutes before finally arriving at Mountain Pointe - where they proceeded to wait again, right up until kickoff.

“I just wanted to get out so badly,” said DV linebacker Mason Stanley. “We were fired up, we were ready to go.

“Finally, when Coach Hinds got on the bus and was like, ‘You guys ready?’ Ahhh. Best feeling. We just erupted.”

After storming out of their bus, DV stormed out to a 7-0 lead.

Then, the Thunder’s stifling defense forced the Pride to go three-and-out their first three possessions.

“The defense was just great tonight,” Hinds said. “I mean I could go down the line. (Devon) Kennard had a great game, Zeb (Togiai) had a great game. The whole defense as a group played really well.”

In the second quarter, after DV mounted a 14-0 lead on two 5-yard runs, MP drove 80 yards for a score, keyed by a 47-yard screen pass to Markus Wheaton.

But that drive, which cut the lead to 14-7, served as a wakeup call for the Thunder. DV’s defense wouldn’t allow another score the rest of the way, and the Pride finished with just 98 total yards, including 30 yards rushing on 24 carries.

“(The drive) almost helped to motivate them, because we had three or four drives where we stopped them, and they thought it was going to be a cake walk,” said DV defensive coordinator Greg Battle. “So mentally, they lost their focus a little bit and they had the big play and we let them in.”

Added Stanley: “It definitely woke us up. We kind of had that mentality that the game was over when we stopped them those couple times.”

Offensively, the Thunder did what they wanted to do when they wanted to do it, amassing 201 yards by the time they took a 17-7 lead into halftime, and 381 when it was all said and done.

Most of the damage came on the ground, where the offensive line created trenches for the DV backs to run through.

“It was nice to have that freedom,” said quarterback Cole Pembroke. “We started running ball in the second half, and we just kept running it. I don’t see why we would stop if it was working.”

Senior Chris Jones led the way with 107 yards, his highest output of the season, and had an 8-yard score. Fellow senior Luke Matthews had 88 yards - adding three touchdowns of his own, all from inside the 5-yard-line.

“Whatever we do in the playoffs is going to really depend on the O-line,” Hinds said. “I was really happy with what they did tonight.”

Now, DV (6-4, 2-1 Central Region) heads to the postseason for the third year in a row.

While the seeding meeting is scheduled for Saturday morning, all indications late Friday night were that the Thunder would be the No. 11 seed, setting up a rematch at Chandler (7-3), the No. 6 seed. The Wolves beat the Thunder 20-13 on Sept. 28.

In the end a whiteout of students from DV stormed the field, celebrating with the players at midfield. It was a stark contrast from the heartbreak just a week earlier, when DV lost to Corona del Sol, 35-32, in overtime.

“It’s great bouncing back from last week with a big win,” Matthews said. “We’re just going to roll with it. We’re just going to roll.”