Hilmar can’t match Colfax precision in playoff loss

Game speed isn’t something that can be replicated in practice.

Try as coaches might to get their players to go through daily reps at full speed, it can’t duplicate the extra gear players possess once the roar of a capacity crowd gets the adrenaline flowing. So while junior quarterback Tristam Crawley took first-team snaps during Hilmar practice throughout the regular season, he entered Friday night’s Sac-Joaquin Secition Division V first-round playoff game without a lot of full-speed experience.

It showed as the Yellowjackets’ offensive timing couldn’t quite match the precision of Colfax. Two of Crowley’s most important passes of the evening were delivered half a heartbeat too late, with the second being jumped by Colfax’s Mason Ahrens and returned 91 yards for a game-sealing touchdown as the No. 7 Falcons upset No. 2 Hilmar 42-21.

“Sometimes you just run into a buzzsaw and I think that happened tonight,” Hilmar coach Frank Marques said. “They’re a really good football team and they outplayed us. They were quick. They were powerful. They executed better than we did.”

One week after turning in possibly its best defensive performance of the season, Hilmar couldn’t get Colfax off of the field in the first half.

The Falcons (8-3) scored on four of their six first-half possessions, with the two stops coming on fourth-down plays deep in Yellowjacket (9-2) territory.

The Hilmar offense looked poised to go blow-for-blow with Colfax in the opening quarter, answering an Ahrens 19-yard touchdown run and a Ryland Heimann 50-yard TD run with a Klay Farris (seven catches, 137 yards) 53-yard touchdown reception and Cody Rentfro (20 carries, 169 yards) 2-yard TD plunge to make it 14-14 at the end of one.

The Yellowjackets couldn’t keep up the pace, struggling to finish drives after that.

The Falcons had no such issues. They took a 28-14 lead into intermission on a Hunter Klopotek (four catches, 121 yards) 32-yard touchdown reception and a Marc Avila 2-yard run. Colfax racked up 354 yards on 44 plays in the opening half.

“They were definitely better than we expected,” Farris said. “We weren’t feeling too bad at halftime. We knew it was just a two-score game and that we had the ball. We just needed to go down and score and we were right back in it.

“We moved the ball well tonight, but it just seemed to go wrong in the red zone. I can’t really explain it.”

After gashing Hilmar with offensive big plays in the opening half, it was the Colfax defense that put the game away in the third quarter.

The first big blow came just two plays into the third quarter as linebacker Anthony Griggs made a heads-up play on an attempted wide receiver screen. Griggs was blocked wide on the play and, reading Crowley’s eyes, broke off of his pass rush and into the path of the throw. He returned the interception to the Hilmar 9, and Avila ran in a score three plays later to make it 35-14.

Crowley (10 of 23 for 163 yards) marched the Yellowjackets right back down the field, but Ahrens erased any comeback hopes with his pick-six.

Rentfro added a 44-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter to round out the scoring.

“The 12-men on the field penalty is huge in the first half. They go from punting to scoring a touchdown,” Marques said. “The two interceptions to start the second half were big momentum swings. He delivers them a second sooner and it could have been a very different night.

“Coulda, woulda, shoulda. At the end of the day, they went out and made more plays than us. Some nights the other team just beats you.”

This story was originally published November 11, 2016 at 12:02 AM with the headline "Hilmar can’t match Colfax precision in playoff loss."