The Graham Steers are area champions after their defeat of the Lubbock Cooper Liberty Patriots in a back and forth matchup where Graham pulled away for the victory.<\/p>\n
Head coach Clay McChristian talked after the game Friday, Nov. 21 about being proud of his team\u2019s fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a good ball club over there (the Patriots). They\u2019re 10-1 for a reason. I was just proud of the way our kids battled. Our offense battled tonight, our defense battled tonight, we gave up some plays early on but against a good team that\u2019s going to happen,\u201d McChristian said.<\/p>\n
Both teams went into the half scoring 14 points on two scores. Going into the second half, Graham was going to have to give it their all.<\/p>\n
The Patriots opened the second half scoring with a rushing touchdown to put Graham down by seven 21-14.<\/p>\n
However, quarterback Jace Gill immediately responded with a long touchdown run down the left side of the field to tie the game once again 21 all.<\/p>\n
It looked like the Patriots were driving to score again, but the Steers kept Lubbock out of the endzone with Santiago Zamora picking up a big pass breakup on 3rd and 8 and Jordan Alexander intercepting a ball in the endzone to keep things tied going into the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Graham opened the fourth quarter with a touchdown drive after a big catch and run from Mike Garcia, a solid reception from Braxton Braim and Gill keeping the drive alive with a run up the middle on fourth down.<\/p>\n
Dylan Cox capped off the drive by punching it into the endzone to give the Steers the lead 28-21. Lubbock Cooper Liberty went on to score and tie things again though, so the game came down to a big final offensive drive for Graham.<\/p>\n
After missing a few passes to Brodie Martin, Gill found Walker Bennett for a first down and after a few missed passes connected with receiver Brodie Martin on the right side of the field to take it into Patriots territory.<\/p>\n
On 4th and 7 the Steers made a gutsy play call and went for it which paid off as Gill hit Braim on the right side of the field for a first down. A couple plays later, Gill hit a wide open Thomason Burkett in the endzone to give Graham the lead 35-28.<\/p>\n
Back to back sacks from Landon Bass and Burkett sealed the game for the Steers.<\/p>\n
Graham\u2019s next playoff matchup is at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 28 against Midland Greenwood at the Mustang Bowl in Sweetwater.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Graham Steers are area champions after their defeat of the Lubbock Cooper Liberty Patriots in a back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[168,170,169],"class_list":{"0":"post-61021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lubbock","8":"tag-lubbock","9":"tag-lubbock-headlines","10":"tag-lubbock-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61021","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=61021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}