Vibabul leads No. 5 Las Vegas High to road win over Desert Pines — PHOTOS
Most quarterbacks try to avoid getting to fourth down. Las Vegas High’s Tanner Vibabul did some of his best work on fourth down Friday night.
The senior tossed three fourth-down touchdown passes to lead the fifth-ranked Wildcats to a 35-22 road win over No. 9 Desert Pines.
“Our quarterback, he’s a really, really good player,” Las Vegas coach Jose Cerriteno said. “Any time we have the ball in his hands, we feel like we’re going to have a chance. That’s just the kids showing up and showing resilience, and us just being very, very fortunate that we have a quarterback of that kind of caliber.”
The Wildcats (8-0, 3-0 Class 5A Mountain League) were 4-for-5 converting fourth downs, including the three TD passes by Vibabul.
He had a 17-yard scoring pass to Porter Wells on fourth-and-5 on the game’s opening drive to put Las Vegas up 7-0 with 8:59 to go in the first quarter.
He added a 23-yard TD pass to Dasean Deayon on fourth-and-9 to push the Las Vegas lead to 14-6 with 25 seconds left in the first quarter.
Vibabul hooked up with Wells again before halftime, this time on fourth-and-goal from the 8-yard line to make it 21-6 with 1:06 left in the half.
“It was just depending on my teammates,” Vibabul said. “We worked a lot in the summer just trusting in each other. So it was easy to put my trust in those guys and it helped us out to convert big plays.”
Desert Pines’ Mario Velasco Fletcher got the Jaguars right back in the game to start the second half, returning the kickoff 86 yards for a touchdown, and Mike Taylor’s 2-point conversion run cut the lead to 21-14.
Velasco Fletcher fielded the ball on a hop at the 14, ran through an arm tackle near the 40 and was gone.
The Jaguars got the ball right back after Portland Yandall picked off a Vibabul pass that was deflected at the line of scrimmage.
Desert Pines went 82 yards on six plays, capped by a 45-yard TD run by Marcus Williams, and Taylor’s 2-point coversion run gave the Jaguars a 22-21 lead with 6:58 to go in the third quarter. Williams’ run came on what was almost a broken play after a high snap to quarterback Jerome Sequeira.
Sequeira secured the ball and handed it to Williams, who looked like he was going to be stopped in the backfield. But he somehow made two tacklers miss and sprinted down the right sideline for the score.
But Vibabul wasn’t done. This time his big play came on third down, when he scored on a 6-yard run to give the Wildcats a 28-22 lead with 1:52 left in the third quarter.
“It was huge for us to come together,” Vibabul said of the win over a nearby rival. “A close town kind of matchup, so it had a lot of buzz. So it was great for us to come in, play as a team and come out victorious.”
Vibabul added one more big fourth-down play, scrambling 12 yards on fourth-and-6 to move the ball to the Desert Pines 1-yard line. Vibabul was shaken up on the play and didn’t return to the game, but backup Tyreese Smith-McDonald scored on a 1-yard run with 7:48 to play for the final margin.
“Fortunate enough for us, we’ve got a backup quarterback that stepped up pretty big,” Cerriteno said.
Vibabul completed 15 of 32 passes for 228 yards. He added 56 rushing yards on 15 carries.
Deayon had six catches for 102 yards, and Wells caguht five balls for 71 yards for Las Vegas, which managed to stay focused despite a delayed start to the game because of lightning. The game, which was scheduled for 6 p.m., finally kicked off at 8:25 and ended at 11:10.
“That was extremely difficult,” Cerriteno said. “Everybody’s got to deal with it, so we didn’t want to make any excuses. We wanted to ensure we did our best to prepare the kids. We shared that with them prior to leaving our campus and coming here, and I think they did a pretty good job of responding correctly.”
Williams finished with 95 yards on 17 carries to lead Desert Pines (3-4, 1-2).