With two weeks between football games this fall, there's plenty of time for Wayland Baptist's Pioneers to dwell on a loss or celebrate a victory.
On the heels of two weeks of dwelling, the Pioneers are looking forward to 14 days of celebration.
Redshirt-freshman
Brenden Strickland started and ended the scoring with touchdown receptions, and the Wayland defense and kicking game shined throughout as the Pioneers came out on the winning end of a 29-24 final with Oklahoma-Panhandle State on Saturday afternoon inside Greg Sherwood Memorial Bulldog Stadium.
"That was a great win for us," WBU coach
Butch Henderson said following his team's entertaining home-opener. "It was fun to coach and just fun to see the kids get to play.
"This (win) will make those next two weeks go a lot faster."
The Pioneers (1-1) scored the first 16 points of the game but found themselves trailing, 24-22, midway through the third quarter. Wayland scored the only points in the contest's final 22-plus minutes when quarterback
Nick Quintero hooked up with Strickland on an inside slant that saw the transfer from the Air Force Academy turn upfield and convert a 35-yard touchdown for the winning points with just under 10 minutes to go.
The TD came in the north end zone where 75 or so fans were peering in from outside the chain link fence in order to watch the game from afar due to COVID-19 restrictions prohibiting spectators inside the stadium.
After the Pioneers regained the upper hand, the Aggies (0-4) got three cracks on offense, but the stingy Wayland defense allowed just one first down. OPSU, following three-and-outs on their first two last-hope drives, finally managed to convert a desperation 4
th-and-15 from its own 20-yard line.
But when the Aggies couldn't pull out 4
th-and-3 from near midfield, the Pioneer offense took over to kneel out the final 48 seconds.
Wayland came up with three huge sacks – shared quarterback takedowns by
Samuel Daily &
Justin Wheeler and
Caleb Molina &
William Humphrey, and a solo sack by Molina – on OPSU's final possession.
"We played extremely well defensively and our kicking game was strong and kept us in field position a lot of times," Henderson said. "And we scored enough points on offense to be able to win."
It was the Pioneers' second straight victory over OPSU, which had beaten Wayland in the teams' five previous meetings since WBU restarted football in 2012. The teams will meet again to kick off the spring portion of the Sooner Athletic Conference schedule on Feb. 20 in Goodwell, Okla.
Wayland scored on the game's opening possession when Quintero rolled left and flipped to Strickland after Strickland's defender came up to stop the quarterback. That made for an easy 9-yard TD toss and a quick 7-0 lead.
Wayland also scored on OPSU's first possession thanks to a safety that resulted when, on fourth-and-11 from the 24, the ball was snapped over the Aggie punter's head and out of the back of the end zone.
The fun continued for the Pioneers after the ensuing free kick by OPSU. Wayland put together an eight-play, 54-yard drive, capped by an 8-yard TD toss from Quintero to
Christian Vaughn, who snuck out of the backfield and was wide-open in the flat for a walk-in score and a 16-0 lead midway through the first.
The teams traded field goals after that, with Wayland's
Jeffery Lucido booting a 25-yarder that made it 19-3 early in the second.
The score tightened when OPSU managed to score twice in two minutes, first on a 24-yard scoop-and-score then on a short run following a 64-yard breakaway by Jamalrian Jones that cut Wayland's led to 19-17 at the half.
Lucido increased the margin to 22-17 with a 34-yard field goal early in the third before the Aggies took the lead for the first time on a 32-yard reception when the WBU defender fell down on an inside slant with no deep help.
After that TD with 7:46 left in the third, the longest scoring drought of the game followed, until Quintero and Strickland hooked up for the game-winning points with 9:58 remaining.
"Things weren't always happening really well offensively, but everybody else held their own," Henderson said. "I can't brag enough on how well the defense and kicking teams played. For them to give us the ball at midfield was huge. They made one play after another."
OPSU ended with just eight first downs and 188 yards of offense compared to 25 firsts and 421 yards for Wayland. The Aggies were 0-for-15 on third-down tries.
Quintero completed 23-of-43 passes for 259 yards to nine different receivers. Strickland ended with four catches for 61 yards while
Dylan Sterling had five grabs for 27 yards.
On the ground, freshman
Jaden Miles rushed for 109 yards on 21 tough carries.
"We moved the ball well but turned it over too much (two lost fumbles and an INT) and had too many penalties (9-for-85 yards)," Henderson said. "We can't do those things. But the good thing is the kids didn't let those things stop them. They hung in there and kept coming back. That's a big positive."
Wayland plays its final game of the fall in two weeks in Fort Worth against Texas Wesleyan (0-1), which lost its only game thus far to Southwestern Assemblies of God University, 33-15. The Rams play Arizona Christian, which defeated Wayland two weeks ago, 31-28 in overtime, next weekend in Phoenix.
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