Defense positions Cougars for title

By LANCE FLEMING / Staff Writer

IRVING - It's always been said that defense wins championships in football, and it was defense that put the Cooper Cougars in position to win a state title.

Cooper's defense - in the shadows of Cooper's high-octane offense for most of the season - stepped into the spotlight in Friday night's 24-21 overtime win over Richardson Lake Highlands in the Class 5A Division II semifinals.

The Cougars held the Lake Highlands wishbone offense to just 194 yards on the ground, 135 yards below its season average. And when the game went to overtime, Cooper tackle Roy Strahan forced a fumble and recovered it to set up the game-winning field goal.

Lake Highlands, however, was forced to play most of the game without standout quarterback Davaren Hightower, who left the contest with 5:45 left in the first half with a hairline fracture in his right tibia. He sustained the injury in last week's quarterfinal win over Tyler John Tyler, but started Friday against Cooper after not taking any snaps in practice during the week.

He still had 58 yards and one 11-yard touchdown on 12 carries before leaving the game.

But his replacement - senior Sean Stilley - wasn't nearly as effective as Hightower at taking the ball, cutting inside the tackle and turning the ball up the field. Plus, at 6 feet, 4 inches tall, Stilley wasn't as hard to find in a pile as Hightower.

Cooper outside linebacker Eric Gobert, who played an outstanding ballgame, said the quarterback change didn't change Cooper's philosophy, but it did help the defense relax a little bit.

"We knew when Hightower went out that we didn't really have to worry about too many big plays from the quarterback," he said. "We knew that Hightower was a big part of their offense, and we thought that might hurt them."

Stilley gained 42 yards on 15 carries, but 35 of those came on a 35-yard touchdown jaunt in the fourth quarter to draw his team to within 21-14. He gained just seven yards on his other 14 carries, and the longest of those was a 7-yard run. Cooper, in fact, dropped Stilley for a loss on seven of his 15 carries.

"We felt like the second kid (Stilley) wasn't as quick," Cooper's first-year defensive coordinator Joe Crousen said. "We came after him with more presssure. But he was still big and strong, and he made a good play on his touchdown run."

The Cooper defense made just three mistakes all night - one on Hightower's touchdown run, another on Stilley's touchdown run, and the other when it didn't get Drew Harden covered and he caught a 52-yard pass to the Cooper 1-yard line that set up the game-tying score with 2:31 left in the game.

"We just didn't get anybody covered up on the pass play," Crousen said. "We didn't get the call in on time, then we were late getting out of the huddle and we just screwed up."

But the Cooper defense came up with the game's biggest play when it needed one the most.

On Lake Highlands' first play of overtime, Strahan got great penetration and put his helmet on the ball, forcing it out of Stilley's hands. Strahan recovered the ball, giving it to Cooper.

Stilley said the play was bad from the get-go.

"I got hit in the middle," he said. "We just got smashed on that play."

"We pressured the ball a lot in the 'A' gap, and we'd been doing it a lot on first down," Crousen said. "We told them all week that if they kept scratching and clawing at the ball that we'd create fumbles. The wishbone is a high-risk offense because the quarterback is pitching the ball, putting it in and taking it out of the fullback's belly and taking it himself."

A few plays after the fumble, Cooper's Courtney Martin - given a second chance after he was roughed on a 44-yard miss - nailed a 22-yarder to win the game for the Cougars.

Cooper's defensive strategy going into the game was to have two men assigned to Hightower at all times, and to take away the pitch. The Cougars were particularly successful at taking away the pitch man. Each of Lake Highlands' two halfbacks - Terrance Jefferson and Drew Harden - had just one carry in the game.

That allowed Cooper outside linebackers Gobert, Coby Ford and Nathan Fort to flow to the outsides while the defensive ends and tackles pinched in to stop fullback Sam Needum, who wound up with just 74 yards on 18 carries.

The defensive scheme was designed by Crousen, who spent seven seasons (1979-1985) on the Mississippi State staff of head coach Emory Bellard, the man who invented the wishbone at the University of Texas in the 1960s.

"In the wishbone you've got three options, and the one that'll kill you is the pitch," Crousen said. "The way the wishbone is designed is for the defense to lose all its pursuit angles. We had to take away the pitch, and we did that. To do that we had to have somebody disciplined enough to stay with the pitch man, and Josh Button did a great job of doing that.

"Then up front we knew we had to whip a blocker and get to the quarterback," he said. "We had two guys assigned to the quarterback on every play. We thought we could take the fullback with the defensive ends and tackles, and the kids did a great job."

Defensive end Cory Aldridge had a big night, and he said he knew Cooper could stop Lake Highlands early in the contest.

"I knew in the first quarter," he said. "I knew then we could stop them. They only had one or two long drives, and they didn't much besides that. But once we got those first couple of series out of the way, I knew we could win."

And that's exactly what Cooper did. And now that defense has Cooper in a position to win the first football state championship in school history.

"I'm really proud of those guys," Crousen said. "It takes great defense to win championships. And when we had to have a big play, we made them. This is a group of players that made a commitment when I took over the defense back in the spring. We talked a lot about commitment, and about what it would take to get here. They've followed through on their commitment, and we're one win away."