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Orange Rush: Bobcats rally late, eke past Prestonwood in thriller
BY Matt Welch, mwelch@acnpapers.com
Between them, the Celina and Prestonwood Christian Academy football teams boast 11 state championships.
As such, a back-and-forth slugfest ensued between the two Friday in the Lions' season opener.
But amid lead changes, momentum swings and big plays, it was a last-second push by Celina quarterback Nathan Elliott that nudged the Bobcats past the Lions with 37 seconds left in regulation for a 34-33 win.
Trailing, 33-21 with 7:14 left in the fourth quarter, the Bobcats found themselves in position to claim the lead with 2:19 left after Jake Raulerson picked off a screen pass by Prestonwood senior Parker Ash, giving Celina the ball at its own 48-yard line. Nickel-and-diming their way down the field behind the legs of Elliott and Jamarick Simmons, a 14-yard quarterback keeper by the former was enough to break down the Lions' defense for the go-ahead score.
Two Celina possessions prior, the Bobcats trimmed the deficit to 33-28 after Elliott found Mike Richardson alone on a play-action fake for a 61-yard touchdown catch.
"I think this is the closest group I've seen since I've been at Celina," Elliott said. "We love each other and give it our all every time."
The Lions mustered a gutsy last-ditch effort, with Ash finding senior Brandon Henry on a 40-yard heave to set Prestonwood up at the Bobcats' 40-yard line with 17 seconds left. Three incomplete passes later, Celina upped its mark to 2-0 with Prestonwood dropping to 0-1.
"Even if they didn't score in the end, it wouldn't have changed what we became through this game," said Chris Cunningham, Prestonwood head coach. "When you play great teams, you hope you come out of it better and I feel like we did that tonight."
Celina's late surge erased a second-half boom that saw the Lions take a double-digit lead after trailing for the bulk of the first half.
The connection between Ash and Henry accounted for each second-half score and all but one Prestonwood touchdown on the evening.
Hauling in touchdown passes of 25 and 8 yards in the second half, Henry finished with 188 yards and four touchdowns on eight catches. Ash's line included 329 yards and four touchdown passes on 17-of-40 completions.
"[Parker and I] have been catching and throwing since seventh grade," Henry said. "We've got a great chemistry and we saw on film that [Celina] played tight and we were hoping they played us that way. We missed the first couple, but we knew we'd get back into it."
The two Henry scores reclaimed a Prestonwood lead that was quickly yielded to Celina following the Bobcats' opening drive of the second half. Slithering his way through the Prestonwood defense, Simmons punctuated a 14-play, seven-minute drive with a 9-yard touchdown run.
The rusher capped his evening at 277 yards with two scores on 32 carries.
"Jamarick is a leader and he's amazing," Elliott said. "He ran so tough, had so many yards and even when he fumbled, we picked him up and got it done."
Simmons headlined a Celina attack that adhered to its tried-and-true running game, which accounted for 391 of the Bobcats' 537 total yards. The ground game set the tone early and often as Elliott capped a 15-play drive with a 1-yard sneak to give Celina a 7-0 lead with 11:32 left in the second quarter.
Simmons ripped off a 74-yard touchdown run down the sideline for a 14-7 Celina edge with 8:44 left in the first half.
While the Bobcats stuck to their age-old blueprint, the Lions showcased a new wrinkle in their onslaught, testing the Bobcat secondary with deep ball after deep ball, dealing mixed results in the process.
After a slow start on offense, Henry jumpstarted the unit by taking an Ash screen 30 yards to the Celina 1 where junior Grayson Warren put the finishing touches on the drive for a 7-7 tie. Shortly after the Bobcats reclaimed the lead on Simmons' long run, an interception by Prestonwood junior Alex Hannis was parlayed into a 10-yard hookup between Ash and Henry, with a blocked extra point maintaining a 14-13 Celina lead.
The two connected one more time before the first half ended with a 30-yard touchdown nudging the Lions in front at the half, 20-14, in the Bobcats' eventual 34-33 victory.
The Bobcats resume play Friday when they travel to Pilot Point for a 7:30 p.m. kickoff while the Lions travel to Cistercian at the same time.
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