Week 2 Whiparound: Top Team Performances, Games and Finishes

Week 2 of the much-anticipated New Mexico spring football season is in the books. Here is our compilation of the week’s top team performances, top games and top finishes. <strong>Team of the Week</strong>: Class 4A Lovington went to Hobbs and beat the 6A Eagles, 28-25 in one of the best games of the weekend. The Wildcats have an incredible amount of talent on the offensive side of the ball starting with one of the deepest wide receiver corps in the state. <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="26256" first="Adam" last="Aguilera"]</strong> amassed two receptions for 25 yards and one touchdown, an 85-yard kickoff return for a TD and two punts for a 36-yard average. That’s doing it all. Lovington’s next two games: Goddard and Portales. Both have Game of the Week potential. Honorable Mention: Cleveland. <strong>Best Team Defensive Performance</strong>: Santa Fe was looking to make a statement that Demons football is indeed back. Instead, they ran smack into an aggressive, hungry Rio Rancho defense. Showing blitzing on a majority of snaps, the Rams smothered the Santa Fe offense throughout the game, allowing only a late TD that avoided the shutout. Rio Rancho prevailed, 57-6, in a game that ended with just under 5 minutes left due to the NMAA’s 50-point mercy rule. Honorable Mention: Bloomfield and Grants. <strong>Best Coaching Debut</strong>: Rio Rancho head coach Gerry Pannoni waited more than a year to make his head coaching debut for the Rams. It was worth the wait as Rio Rancho dominated from start to finish. They led 21-0 at the end of the first quarter and cruised home from there. <strong>Best Finish</strong>: It looked like Taos and Raton were headed to overtime when Taos had the ball near midfield with just seconds remaining. However, Taos ran one final play and miraculously found paydirt. A third-down Hail Mary heave down the field into double coverage was somehow caught for a TD with one second left. Incredible. <strong>Best Second Half</strong>: Goddard and Artesia were locked in a close game in the third quarter with the Rockets clinging to a 22-14 lead. Then the Rockets took off – literally led by RB <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="26224" first="Sammy" last="Zaragoza"]</strong>, who may had had the best sequence of any player in the state late in the third quarter. He first ran four yards for a TD and added the 2-pt conversion for a 30-14 Goddard lead. Moments later, when Artesia attempted a fake punt on fourth down, Zaragoza delivered the big blow to give the ball back to Goddard. Zaragoza than raced 46 yards for a TD on the first play to give Goddard a 36-14 lead heading into the fourth quarter. Game over. <strong>Best Quarterback</strong>: Cleveland quarterback <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="26185" first="Jeff" last="Davison"]</strong> might be the most underrated player in the state. Sure, he’s surrounded by elite talent, but unless you have a quarterback who can manage and execute the game plan, all that talent will go to waste. Davison threw for close to 300 yards and three touchdowns while running for two more scores in the Storm’s surprising easy 45-14 victory over Clovis in Rio Rancho on Saturday. Honorable Mention: [player_tooltip player_id="26160" first="Marcos" last="Lopez"], Las Cruces. <strong>Best Rivalry Win</strong>: Mayfield’s move to Class 5A may have taken a little of the steam out of the Trojans’ annual rivalry game with Las Cruces. But not much. It’s still arguably the state’s top rivalry game. The two teams tangled Saturday afternoon at the Field of Dreams and Las Cruces. To Mayfield’s credit, the game wasn’t decided until deep into the second half. Las Cruces led, 14-6, at halftime before two long drives in the second led by dual threat QB <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="26160" first="Marcos" last="Lopez"]</strong> and some rugged defense allowed the Bulldawgs to pull away for a 23-6 win. Las Cruces controlled the ball for most of the second half. <strong>Best Drive</strong>: Roswell, the two-time defending Class 5A champions, was clinging to a 16-14 lead over Carlsbad at the Wool Bowl early in the fourth quarter. Champions come through in key moments and that’s exactly what the Coyotes did. Led by senior QB  <strong>Zeke Gonzales</strong>, making his first career start, they launched a 96-yard TD drive that drained about eight minutes off the clock. Gonzales ran for three first downs on the long drive that was capped by RB “Fast” <strong>Freddie Anaya</strong>’s short one-yard TD plunge. He added the important two-point conversion for a 24-14 lead. The Roswell defense then intercepted a Carlsbad pass to seal the hard-fought victory. <strong>Look Ahead</strong>: Week 3 is filled another lengthy list of competitive matchups. The Albuquerque schools finally join the party after the state waived the 14-day hybrid learning requirement before full team practice may begin. Games kickoff Thursday night and continue all the way into late Saturday afternoon. Here is a quick list of the top games for next weekend: Cleveland vs. Centennial (at Socorro) La Cueva at Los Lunas Lovington at Goddard Roswell at Artesia Bloomfield at Farmington Albuquerque Academy at Bernalillo Sandia vs. Cibola (at Wilson Stadium, Albuquerque) Clovis at Rio Rancho Eldorado vs. Volcano Vista (at Wilson Stadium) https://twitter.com/PrepRedzoneNM/status/1370907393282826242 https://twitter.com/SportsPrimo/status/1370910288698953737 https://twitter.com/lvtwildcatsfb/status/1370869993395617794 https://twitter.com/GrantsFootball/status/1370644025875722241 https://twitter.com/AlamoFootball/status/1370598637596602369 https://twitter.com/CoyotesRising/status/1371212827113914372 https://twitter.com/_NMAA/status/1370913793891442689