By RYAN POSNER | BrazosSports.com
Nov 25, 2016
College Station’s football program has already maneuvered through uncharted waters this year and has another opportunity to set a benchmark this weekend.
College Station put together its first undefeated regular season and has set a school record with 12 wins thus far, all in just the team’s third season of Class 5A competition.
The Cougars will get a crack at setting the school record for longest playoff run when they meet Port Neches-Groves at 7 p.m. Friday at Stallworth Stadium in the 5A Division II Region III semifinals.
College Station (12-0, 6-0 District 20-5A) lost to Angleton in the third round of the playoffs last year and has never advanced to a regional final in football.
“Just being able to survive at this point in the year is such a great thing,” College Station coach Steve Huff said. “We don’t think about it as much as , ‘Oh, we haven’t been there.’ We’re pretty new, so we haven’t been to a whole lot of places. I think you’re just so tightly focused on what’s going on that there’s really nothing else.”
The Cougars and Indians rely heavily on their dual-threat quarterbacks — junior Marquez Perez for College Station and sophomore Roschon Johnson for Port Neches-Groves (11-1, 7-1 District 22-5A). Cougars senior Ty Brock, who began the year as the team’s starting quarterback but broke his left fibula in Week 2, has been cleared to play, though Perez will remain College Station’s starter.
Perez threw for 231 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 138 yards and two more TDs in College Station’s 63-25 area victory over Magnolia last week.
Johnson, meanwhile, threw for three touchdowns in the Indians’ 28-14 win over Fort Bend Willowridge. He also rushed for 265 yards and has rushed for at least 200 yards in his last three games.
“That’s a storied-tradition football program,” Huff said of Port Neches-Groves. “[Johnson] is a sophomore, but he plays like a senior. He’s run for a ton of yards, and they do a lot of stuff with him in their rushing game.”
The Cougars will face a tougher defensive front from Port Neches-Groves than they saw last week against Magnolia. In fact, something will have to give in the overall matchup of College Station’s offense vs. PN-G’s defense. College Station totaled over 600 yards of offense and didn’t commit a turnover last week, with PN-G holding Fort Bend Willowridge to just 285 total yards — 132 rushing.
“I’ve been telling our guys all week that they’re not going to give you any yardage; you’re going to have to take it,” Huff said. “You’re going to have to put pads on them and block them and create some holes.”
College Station has the players who can hit holes when given them, a group that includes Perez, senior running back Chris Monroe and senior wide receivers Braden Tschirhart and Eric Peterson among others. Monroe rushed for 160 yards last week, while Tschirhart and Peterson combined for three touchdowns.
The Cougars also have blocked a punt and returned it for a touchdown and returned an interception for a TD through two playoff games.
“Sometimes it’s so strange with all these new matchups — you never know how it’s going to go on offense, but we’re very fortunate to put ourselves in a situation where we’ve got things rolling,” Huff said. “We had some momentum swings that were huge. Those things you can’t see coming.”
Huff isn’t ready to look ahead to a possible matchup with A&M Consolidated in next week’s regional final. He also isn’t ready to reflect on how far the Cougar program has progressed in its first decade of football, but practicing on Thanksgiving for a second straight season is where he wants it to be.
“Obviously, your goal is to go further than that,” Huff said, “but playing on Thanksgiving week is always a goal, and it has a special tone to it.”
