North Crowley survives Coppell, sets up undefeated quarterfinal clash vs. Allen

The North Crowley football team got pushed around in the first half against Coppell on Saturday afternoon, Nov. 30.

The Panthers stopped themselves for much of the first two quarters, but the defense stepped it up in the second half leading North Crowley to a 35-24 win over the Cowboys in a Class 6A Division 1 Regional at Newsom Stadium.

North Crowley (13-0), No. 3 in the final Class 6A state poll put out by Dave Campbell’s, will continue its gauntlet with a state quarterfinal match up with No. 7 Allen (13-0) next week. Allen defeated No. 18 Euless Trinity 22-21 on Friday, Nov. 29.

If the Panthers win next week, they could potentially set up a showdown with No. 1 Duncanville in the state semifinals.

With the game tied at 21, North Crowley started the second half by turning the ball over to No. 8 Coppell (12-1) when Tyrell Roberson picked off a pass at the Cowboys 39-yard line. The Panthers had suffered two costly turnovers in the first half, but the defense for North Crowley stepped it up after the break.

North Crowley never even really got close to Coppell quarterback Edward Griffin, a Baylor commit, in the first half, but the Panthers got three sacks on the Cowboys’ first two series of the second half to force punts.

“Coach (Ray Gates) told us before the game that if we win up front then we’re going to win the game,” said Neutae Cassey, a senior linebacker/edge rusher that was in on two of the three sacks. “We started kind of slow in the first half, but we stepped up and got our energy up and the back end did what they do flying around getting picks and pass break ups. Just a good team effort overall.”

After each Coppell three and out to start the second half, the North Crowley put points on the board. Running back Cornelius Warren, who missed several games mid-season, was called on to take much of the workload in the second half.

Warren finished with 201 yards rushing on 30 carries, but the senior carried 20 times in the second half for 130 yards. North Crowley only ran 25 plays in the entire second half.

“It feels great to come back in this environment and just dominate with my o-line up front, the wall,” said Warren. “I feel like we can do a lot of this every week in the run game and the pass game. It doesn’t matter, we’ll dominate.”

His 40-yard scoring run after the first Coppell punt, that was set up with a 23-yard return by Quentin Gibson, gave North Crowley a 28-21 lead with 8:51 left in the third quarter. After the second punt, Warren picked up 36 yards on four carries before Kiante Ingram came in to cover the final 10 yards, including a seven-yard scoring run.

Coppell had a couple of chances after that, but North Crowley’s defense came up big to hold the Cowboys to just three second-half points, that coming after the Ingram TD with 51 seconds left in the third quarter.

North Crowley lost the ball on downs with 8:45 left in the game at the Coppell 25 and the Cowboys drove the length of the field. But a jarring hit on running back Coppell’s Joshua Lock at the two-yard line forced a fumble that bounded into the end zone, where North Crowley’s Thomas Cook, Jr. fell on it for a touchback.

North Crowley had a pair of costly turnovers in the first half and was having trouble stopping the Cowboys running game, but the Panthers managed to pull even at 21-all at the half.

Coppell running back O’Marion Mbakwe scored the first of his three first-half touchdowns to cap the Cowboys opening drive of the game. The 10-play, 72-yard march stunned the North Crowley defense with all of the plays except for one being running plays.

Mbakwe darted up the middle from the five to give Coppell a 7-0 lead with 7:07 left in the first quarter. North Crowley answered as North Crowley does, 13 seconds later.

On the Panthers first play from scrimmage, quarterback Chris Jimerson, Jr. tossed a lateral in the right flat to his favorite receiver Quentin Gibson. But Gibson didn’t take off and run as expected but reared back and tossed a 75-yard scoring pass to Kevin Moore to even the score.

“We’ve being running that play at practice, but we haven’t really done it in a game,” said Gibson, a recent Colorado commit. “It was in the game plan, though, and I got the ball, and their defense was just rushing to me. It left Kevin open, and I was able to get it to him.”

“We’ve had that in for several weeks now, but I didn’t know we were going to call it on the first play of the game,” said North Crowley coach Ray Gates. “When Quentin catches the ball,l it triggers a lot of attention.”

It was all running backs for the rest of the first half as Mbakwe scored twice on runs of two and six yards for Coppell and Warren had scoring runs of 11 and two yards for North Crowley. Warren’s two-yard touchdown came with 19 seconds left in the half and was set up by a 54-yard run by Jimerson.

North Crowley played a tough non-district schedule against the likes of No. 6 DeSoto and highly regarded teams such as Lancaster, Denton Guyer, and Rockwall just to get ready for a playoff run like this.

“You find out who you are and what you can do when you’re back is against the wall,” said Gates. “We put these guys in a lot of adverse situations during the regular season so that these moments don’t get too big for them. When they’re playing in rounds three, four, five and six they’ll be able to understand the importance of every play as the game progresses.”