Having already clinched at least a share of a fourth straight region title, the only question entering Friday night was if Crimson Cliffs would win it outright.<\/p>\n
Hosting Pine View on Senior Night, the Mustangs once again proved they were the kings of Region 9, handling Pine View 56-7.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told the players you earned the right to be in that driver\u2019s seat and the opportunity. You have to seize the moment,\u201d Mustangs head coach Wayne Alofipo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe told them, \u2018Hey, listen, you gotta make sure we keep the mind right. Stay humble, stay hungry. They\u2019re going to want to come out here and take it from you. You\u2019ve got to go take it and earn it,\u2019 and these young men did that tonight. Just proud of our young men.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alofipo noted that his team had to replace 17 starters from last year\u2019s team, and mentioned players such as Nate Ence, Diedrick Moore, Briton Phillips and Madden Smith who have risen to the occasion.<\/p>\n
In a game that had a lot of hype in the buildup, it was one-sided from the start. On its first drive, Crimson Cliffs needed just over three minutes to find the end zone, as running back Kade Shaw found it from five yards out for the 7-0 lead.<\/p>\n
The Mustangs ultimately jumped out to a 28-0 advantage before Pine View scored, but Crimson Cliffs added another touchdown before halftime to make it 35-7 at that point.<\/p>\n
The second half was more of the same, as the Crimson Cliffs offense continued to add more points to the board while the defense made stop after stop. <\/p>\n
While the offense added 21 more points, the defense held the Panthers scoreless in the second half, forcing two more turnovers, including an interception on the opening drive.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, Pine View is a great team, but we have great coaches who gave us a great scheme,\u201d Moore said.<\/p>\n
And what did it mean to take down Pine View while clinching the outright Region 9 title?<\/p>\n
\u201cMe and a couple of buddies, we all grew up going to Pine View,\u201d Moore said. \u201cAll my brothers went to Pine View, so I just had that little extra emotion added to the game. <\/p>\n
\u201cAlso, with it being Senior Night, we didn\u2019t want to go out badly, so I think we all just tried our best. We limited the mental mistakes, and we just balled out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not only did the Mustangs lay claim to another region title, but they also racked up an 18th straight region win, a streak that dates back to the end of the 2022 season.<\/p>\n
Even with one trophy in tow, Crimson Cliffs has eyes on a bigger prize \u2014 a third consecutive state championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to get the second seed and try for the best opportunity we could for the program to get the best path to try and get to the \u2018ship again,\u201d Alofipo added of the win.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not an easy task, but you try to position yourself the best you can. These young men have earned the right to do that, and we\u2019re positioned well to march into the playoffs. This is a game where you want to end the season this way, and this will propel us into the playoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having already clinched at least a share of a fourth straight region title, the only question entering Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,98491,596,135018,5872,135019,85],"class_list":["post-222101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-crimson-cliffs-utah-high-school-sports","tag-football","tag-football-high-school","tag-news-feed-local","tag-pine-view-utah-high-school-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}