A trip down to Wimberley to play the Texans is always a difficult task for the road team. Last Friday night was no exception, as the Badgers were the team that made the trip.
However, for the first time this season, the Badgers took great care of the football and were very efficient offensively. They outlasted Wimberley 31-24 to move to 4-0 this season.
After a 24-7 Badger lead at halftime was wiped away by Wimberley, Lampasas got the ball with under four minutes to play in a tie game. The Badger offense had not found any success in the second half, but they would conduct a drive that was capped off by KJ Reed on the ground from 10 yards out with about a minute to play to regain the lead.
The Lampasas defense then got an immediate stop of Wimberley, aided largely by a big sack from Tate Langford on second down, and that would be the end of the game.
Reed was a standout on offense, as he ran for 101 yards on 18 carries and found the end zone twice. After the game, he talked about that final rush to give Lampasas the lead.
“I got the ball, and my linemen had a pretty big hole to my left side, and I saw the one guy, made him miss and just went into the end zone,” Reed said.
Through the air, Lampasas was very efficient. Bryson Roberts completed 11 of his 13 passes for 205 yards and two touchdowns, both of which went to Jaden McElwain.
McElwain had six catches for 150 yards receiving and the two scores to continue his very productive season.
A lot of credit for the won goes to the Lampasas offensive line and the players’ ability to create holes in the running game and protect in the passing game.
“They work really hard,” Reed said of his blockers. “The coaches work really hard with them, and those guys, I’ve never seen an O-line that wants it more. They work their tails off in the weight room, and they’re great guys.”
On defense, the Badgers had Wimberley offbalance in the first half and got several stops that allowed Lampasas to jump out to the halftime lead.
A big play early came when Jonathan Bowling blocked the first Wimberley punt of the night. That gave the Badgers good field position that they eventually would turn into a Zimri Vergara field goal for a 3-0 lead. That play served as momentum for Lampasas, and the Badgers vaulted from that to an eventual 17-0 advantage in the second quarter.
Bowling described the play after the win.
“My nose guard and my end, they both just opened it up for me, and I just got right through, and Tate [Langford] also helped with opening it up,” Bowling said. “So it was all of us, and it worked out. I got through and blocked it.”
He went on to explain what made the Lampasas defense so successful early in the game.
“They didn’t really have anything too special, so I guess we just kind of stayed simple with it,” Bowling said.
The comeback effort by Wimberley was not new this season, as the Texans have come back from big deficits to pick up their wins over Canyon Lake and Fredericksburg. The Badgers expected that kind of effort, and it was a message in the locker room at halftime.
“Wimberley, hats off to them,” head coach Troy Rogers said. “Like we told our team, it’s fun to play a championshiplevel program all the time because they reload … and that’s what they’ve done this year. They’ve already come back two different times this year from big deficits in the second half, and so we knew that and we talked about it all week.
“We talked about it at halftime, and then here they come,” Rogers said. “Our guys kept fighting and found some resiliency on that last drive after they tied it up to go down the field and score. Really proud of them.”
The coach also was very complimentary of the offensive line and players’ ability to bounce back from a tough week the game before and perform well against Wimberley.
“That was the focal point this week, that we have to execute better and do that,” Rogers said. “We have a young O-line and have some young guys playing, and so those growing pains are going to happen. Last week the growing pains happened, and we got away with a win.
“Then we worked on it, and the coaches did a great job of making sure that we get the point across, made some slight adjustments with some personnel packages and stuff, and I thought overall they did a really good job,” the head coach said.
Rogers also said he thought the Lampasas running backs did a good job of running tough, and Roberts did a great job of protecting the ball and getting it into the hands of the playmakers in the skill positions.
With the Badgers now 4-0, they turn their attention to Waco University coming to town on Friday night.
The Trojans will present another tough challenge, as they will be fast, big and athletic with several Division I scholarship athletes on the field.
“They’ve got athletes all over the field,” Rogers said. “They’re going to be big, they’re going to be fast, and they’ve lost a couple of games, but they’ve been playing some pretty tough opponents so they’re going to be ready to go.”
The Homecoming game against University is set to kick off at 7:30 p.m. on Badger Field.
