Wimberley falls to Fredericksburg Battlin’ Billies

Still smarting from last Thursday’s 46-20 football beat-down by Fredericksburg, this week the Wimberley Texans football team travels to take on Austin Regents in the last pre-district competition. The Texans’ record stands at 1-3 while the Knights of Austin Regents are 3-0.

In their three wins, Regents has averaged 34 points per game while giving up only 19 points. In their division, they are ranked second in the state. During the 2017 season, Regents went undefeated while winning their league championship.

According to Wimberley coach Doug Warren, “They’re a pretty good football team. For the last two years they’ve played for the state championship of their division. Obviously they’ve got a very solid team. It’s a different experience for us because they’re a team we’ve never played.”

“We’ll run up against another good quarterback with skilled players around him. He’s very accurate with his throws. So it’s going to be another challengeanother good football team on a Friday night playing on their home field.”

Turning to the Fredericksburg loss last Thursday, the Texan coach summarized some of the problems against the powerful Billies. “Our margin of error is slim, so when we make mistakes, it hurts us. We did some good things in the first half, but we can’t have turnovers and penalties that stop our offense. We’ve got to get rid of those mistakes and mental lapses. Right now, we’re not good enough to overcome those kinds of mistakes.”

Coming out for the second half, Wimberley kicked off. “At that point, Fredericksburg started a steady, pounding drive,” Warren related. “After five plays, they punched it in and that let the air out of our team. By midway through that third quarter, the game had slipped away from us,” Coach Warren said.

“Our defensive backfield got caught up on several occasions when they bit on a fake and caught up. That let a very good quarterback make perfect throws to uncovered receivers for steady gains then touchdowns.

After the game, Warren said, “The way we play defense, we need to put pressure on the quarterback. It all has to work together, so when we didn’t apply that pressure, we gave up long runs and easy completed passes.” During the televised game, Fredericksburg quarterback Brant Bowers threw for 235 yards, most going to halfback Jarrett Beard. Bowers also ran ten times for another 57 yards.

The Texan coach was quick to hand out praise to some players. “I liked the way Guy Kypuros ran the ball against Fredericksburg. He gives us the leadership we need. And, it was good to see Caleb Cervenka back out there in the flow of things. He’s been hurt since the first week and we’ve missed his skills.”

On another good note, quarterback Cooper McCollum has passed for 640 yards so far this year plus he’s run another 110 yards for a QB rating of 85.4. Against Fredericksburg, he completed 13 of 26 passes for 170 yards.

After the away game at Austin Regents, Wimberley will enjoy an open week on October 5 before returning to their own field on October 12 for the homecoming game against Eastside Memorial, the first of five district games.