Minutemen roll into playoffs with rout of Pioneers

Fourteen jumping jacks. That’s how many the Liberty Minutemen football team will do in practice.

The number is 14 because that is how long coach Chris Watts wants this season to be. A 14-game season for the Minutemen would mean a first-round bye in the playoffs and a run to the state championship game.

The playoff picture may still be uncertain, but with a 43-23 home win against Heritage on Friday, the Minutemen locked up that first-round bye and assured themselves of at least two more weeks of practice and sets of 14 jumping jacks.

Though the Pioneers have only three wins this year, the Minutemen knew that they were facing a team that has improved week by week throughout the season. Coupled with Liberty’s bye week, Watts was worried how his team would perform.

“I was telling people all week long I wish we would have played them at the beginning of the year,” he said.

“It was a little hard coming off the bye week,” added quarterback Tyler Bowyer. “We practiced hard during the bye week, but this is the first game in two weeks.”

With those two factors weighing heavily against them, the Minutemen needed a good start and got one, recovering a Pioneer fumble on the kickoff and scoring two plays later on a 3-yard run by Brandon Sparrow.

The Pioneers would answer — gashing the Minutemen for a huge gain on a third down from midfield after a double-reverse halfback pass from Lawrence Blake was caught by Seth Griffin at the 17. Lakuan McPhaul would find daylight two plays later on a quarterback keeper up the middle and a two-point conversion put the Pioneers ahead 8-7.

Liberty’s ground game would produce the next score after Anthony Reynolds picked up 54 yards on a third-down play from Liberty’s own 40. Bowyer capped the drive with a 6-yard touchdown run. The Pioneers had no answer for Liberty’s prolific ground game. Five different Minutemen had at least 30 yards, highlighted by Reynolds’ 108 and Bowyer’s 100.

After a three-and-out from both teams, the Pioneers special teams made another costly mistake, muffing a punt that Liberty recovered on its 41. The Minutemen would fail to score, but the Pioneers again coughed up the football and Liberty would capitalize, scoring on a 23-yard play-action pass from Bowyer, who found Matt Kerr in the corner of the end zone. In all, the Pioneers committed five turnovers — three fumbles and two interceptions.

“Turnovers hurt us. In the first half we were basically killing ourselves with big turnovers,” Pioneers tailback Tysheem Saunders said.

The Minutemen would tack on another touchdown with just over a minute remaining on a 3-yard run from Josh Smith. However, Liberty failed to deliver the knockout punch in the first half, allowing Saunders to rumble 73 yards for a touchdown moments later, leaving the halftime score at 27-16 instead of 27-8.

“We had a chance to put it away in the first half but we … gave up a long touchdown … those kind of things bring back bad memories,” Watts said.

The knockout punch that they missed in the first half landed in the third quarter. Bowyer scored on a short run on the opening drive and Zach Rawlins connected on a 21-yard field goal to give the Minutemen a 36-16 lead. Bowyer also had a 50-yard touchdown scamper in the fourth.

“He (Watts) wanted us to come out and score quickly. He said this drive was the most important drive of the season,” Bowyer said.

The Pioneers would score one more touchdown late in the fourth quarter on a 1-yard run by McPhaul, who had 72 yards on the ground. Saunders finished with 161 rushing yards.