Nothing beats a win going into a long break like the Wayland Baptist football team has coming up. Nothing, that is, unless it's a win in quadruple overtime!
In a wildly entertaining Sooner Athletic Conference match-up that saw 25 points scored in the final 3½ minutes of regulation followed by 30 points in the four overtimes, Wayland finally prevailed over Lyon College (Ark.) on Saturday afternoon at Greg Sherwood Memorial Bulldog Stadium when
Jacoby Hunt, a sophomore running back from Sweetwater, scored on an 18-yard run and the exhausted Pioneer defense held the Scots out of the end zone.
In a relatively short game that lasted not quite 3½ hours, WBU came out on top and snapped a three-game losing skid, 49-43.
Wayland (2-3, 1-3 SAC) built a 21-3 lead on the strength of two touchdown runs by
De'Sean Johnson – who wound up with three – and a 47-yard run by Hunt, the first score of his career.
But Lyon (2-4, 1-3) came storming back in the second half, scoring 21 unanswered points to take a 24-21 lead with 3:23 left in the fourth period.
The Scots held the lead for all of only 14 seconds as sophomore speedster
Daniel Hurn of Levelland returned a kickoff 87 yards for his first career TD.
Edgar Baeza booted the last of his four PATs to put Wayland up 28-24.
The Scots didn't blink, however. A 49-yard kickoff return set Lyon up at the Wayland 29-yard line, and two plays later quarterback Spencer Childress found Shaka Robinson on a 27-yard touchdown pass. The PAT put Lyon back on top, 31-28, with 2:28 left.
Behind quarterback
Nick Quintero who sat out most of the game with an injury as
Brook Quinones admirably filled in, the Pioneers proceeded to drive from their own 35 to the Lyon 10 as Quintero completed a pair of crucial third-down-and-10 passes. The first went to
De'Sean Johnson for 24 yards and the second to
Noah Lujan for 35.
The second completion came after an inadvertent whistled nullified a Wayland fumble and Lyon recovery that likely would have ended the game.
The Pioneers averted another game-ending turnover when Lyon's Tre Hawkins' interception in the end zone was aided by a defensive holding penalty. That set up Wayland with a first down at the 7, but after three incompletions the Pioneers had to settle for Baeza's 24-yard, game-tying field goal with 30 seconds.
Thanks to a pass interference penalty, Lyon managed to move it to midfield before running out of time.
The teams traded field goals on their first two overtime possessions, with Gomez connecting from 36 and 39 yards for Lyon and Baeza from 40 and 36 yards for Wayland.
Overtime No. 3 saw Lyon's Titus Nelson score on a 1-yard run, but the requisite 2-point try failed with an incomplete pass.
It took Wayland two plays to tie it, both runs by Johnson. The touchdown came on a play where Johnson was trapped in the backfield before a freeing himself with a spinning move to elude three would-be tacklers and running in from 14 yards out.
With a chance to win it, Quinones' pass was broken up by Lyon's Hawkins, and the teams headed to a fourth overtime.
It was Wayland's time to be first on offense, and three straight handoffs to Hunt resulted in an 18-yard touchdown run up the middle and a six-point lead. The Pioneers came up short on their PAT, another handoff to Hunt who lateraled to Quinones in an attempt to keep the play alive.
That didn't matter, though, as Wayland's defense stepped up to the challenge.
Lyon's Emetrious Scott fumbled out of bounds on first down, resulting in a loss of 3. After a holding penalty backed the Scots up 10 more yards and after two passes netted just five yards, Lyon's final play on 4
th-and-18 from the 33 was an incomplete pass defended by
Richard Parham.
It was Wayland's second overtime game since restarting football in 2012. The Pioneers also won the first two years ago against Howard Payne, 40-37 in single-OT.
The statistics were as close as the game itself. Wayland held a narrow edge in first downs, 23-22, and total yards, 286-265.
The Pioneers' running game came through big time. After being held to 40 yards the last two games combined, Wayland produced 205 against Lyon. Hunt carried a dozen times for 112 yards and two TDs while Johnson hauled it 19 times for 97 yards and three scores. Johnson added four catches for 50 yards while Hunt made three grabs for 23. Lujah was WBU's top yards receiver with 58 on three catches.
Quinones finished 13-of-27 for 122 yards; Quintero was 2-for-10 for 59.
Freshman linebacker
Manny Arguijo and sophomore lineman
Andre Smith paced the Pioneers' defense with eight tackles apiece, while Arguijo also came up with an interception.
Richard Parham and
Darrian Williams tacked on seven stops each. Wayland's "D" recorded four sacks and 10 tackles for loss by 12 different players.
Wayland has next weekend off before traveling to Tyler to take on Texas College at 2 p.m. Oct. 20. The Steers (0-2, 0-2), with losses to Texas Wesleyan (36-7) and No. 19 Arizona Christian (31-27), faced Southwestern Assemblies of God in Waxahachie on Saturday and will travel to Surprise, Ariz., to take on Ottawa next weekend.
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