For the second time this season, the West Plains Wolves had their hearts broken after going toe-to-toe with the best of the best in the area.<\/p>\n
In the season opener, Class 3A Division II defending state champion Wall rallied back to defeat West Plains, 42-35.<\/p>\n
Three weeks later, Lubbock Cooper Liberty used a strong fourth-quarter to secure a 29-28 victory over West Plains Friday afternoon in non-district play at Happy State Bank Stadium.<\/p>\n
With the loss, West Plains fell to 2-2 on the season and closes out non-district at 7 p.m. this Friday against No. 1 Stephenville at Lubbock Cooper High School Stadium.<\/p>\n
Lubbock Cooper Liberty moved to 4-0 following the hard-fought win over West Plains.<\/p>\n
West Plains and Liberty went back-and-forth on the scoreboard right up until the final buzzer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moments after Talon Wilcox’s touchdown cut the deficit to 28-27 late in the fourth quarter, Liberty elected to go for the win on the two-point conversion. Liberty quarterback Cy Leach rolled to his left and connected the two-point conversion pass to tight end Koleman Hendrix for the 29-28 lead.<\/p>\n
On the ensuing West Plains’ possession, sophomore quarterback Timber Russell completed multiple passes to set up a 62-yard field goal attempt by Gipson Gnagy. The kick from Gnagy fell inches short with no time remaining as Liberty’s sideline erupted in celebration.<\/p>\n
Both offenses managed to light up the scoreboard, relying on strong running games and a balanced passing attack.<\/p>\n
Kaiden Joseph led Liberty with 16 carries for 94 yards and a touchdown, while Wilcox had 9 carries for 24 yards and a touchdown.<\/p>\n
Leach completed 15-of-29 passes for 241 yards and a pair of touchdown passes with an interception. Both of Leach’s touchdown passes were to Pierce Fioroni for 35 yards and Jamison Gonzalez for 60 yards.<\/p>\n
West Plains’ offense flourished behind senior running back Slade Russell, who had 21 carries for 201 yards and a touchdown. Paxton Chandler added a pair of carries for 8 yards and a touchdown, and Nate Alvarez had a 20-yard touchdown run.<\/p>\n
Timber Russell completed 11-of-14 passes for 166 yards with a 36-yard touchdown to Gage Blaser and an interception.<\/p>\n
Defensively, West Plains linebacker Bentley Chandler finished with a game-high 19 tackles and Paxton Chandler added 9 tackles. Kylan Akins also had five tackles and a pair of quarterback sacks.<\/p>\n
Senior defensive end Uriah Cruz recovered a fumble for West Plains and Kline Hooker picked off his fourth pass in the past three games for a 12-yard return. Andrew Ward also blocked a field goal to end the first half for West Plains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the second time this season, the West Plains Wolves had their hearts broken after going toe-to-toe with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[168,170,169],"class_list":["post-443416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}