Since Troy Rogers took over the football program 11 seasons ago, the Badgers have been all about earning the right to win. For Rogers, the expectation is to make sure everything players do amounts to earning the right to win over summer break, in school hallways, in how the student-athletes comport themselves at football practice and outside of it.
Lampasas came out Friday night with the expectation that it would earn a win in its home opener on Senior Night. Facing Pflugerville Connally in a nondistrict matchup, the Badgers put on a show for their home crowd, but they didn’t pick up the win.
In their first overtime game since 2018’s Week 5 loss to La Vernia, the Badgers fell to Connally, 33-32.
“I thought our leadership from our senior class was really good,” Rogers said about the Senior Night loss. “We got some guys who it means a lot to, and they’re really good role models for our younger guys, and I mean, you hate it for them to lose a game, but at the end of the day you play 10 of these. There are five non-district ball games to get you ready for district, and that’s what we don’t want to lose sight of.”
Early in the game, the Badgers seemed to be in control of the momentum, although Connally’s defense shut them down in key moments.
The Cougars were first to score late in the first quarter, and Lampasas mustered a reply in the second quarter with a 26-yard pass from quarterback Ross Kothmann to receiver Tripp Stinnett. The extra-point attempt sailed wide left.
Connally shot back on the following drive with a breakout run from its star athlete Jonah Garcia, who escaped the Badger secondary for a 62-yard touchdown run.
Another connection between Kothmann and Stinnett had the Badgers almost evened up headed into the half at 14-13.
Lampasas came back out of the tunnel in the third quarter looking like a team that could compete and beat any opponent. It put together two consecutive touchdown drives, one ending with freshman running back Housten Hill in the end zone for the first touchdown of his varsity career. John Stenson came up with another score on the next drive to make it 26-14.
In the fourth quarter the Cougars took the momentum back, and it looked like they might win the ball game after scoring their second touchdown of the quarter. Two bad snaps on extra-point attempts had them even with the Badgers at 26-26 by the end of regulation.
Badger Field would have its first overtime contest since 2010’s 37-34 win over Austin Travis.
Badger fans held their breath as Rogers went out to center field to meet with the referees and Connally’s coach, Charles Burton. The Lampasas offense took the field and drove from Connally’s 25-yard line into the end zone on their final shot of the drive. Kothmann found Cayhil Isom for his first touchdown of the season, a perfectly placed floater above the heads of three Cougar defenders. But much to the chagrin of the home crowd, the extrapoint attempt went wide left once again.
The Cougars did much of the same thing on their series, driving down from the Badgers’ 25-yard line on the north side of the field, culminating in a goalline stand where Garcia managed to just squeak across the line to score. Then the kicker set up for the extra-point attempt. The Cougars snapped the ball well enough and set up their kicker to send the football cruising through the uprights to beat the Badgers on their Senior Night.
“Every game situation is going to be a little bit different,” Rogers said after the loss. “They’re going to mean more as the season goes on, so you’re hoping that you can take from this, and the silver line is there’s a lot of football left. Let’s get better from this.”
As for the kicker who missed three extra-point attempts in the loss, Rogers was confident the locker room would stay positive around the athlete in spite of the circumstances.
“Credit to him, he went out on a ledge and came out to play football his senior year, and not a lot of guys would do that,” Rogers said. “His kickoffs are really good, and there’s a lot of positives that we’re going to focus on with him. Extra points are one thing, and we just got to do better. Like I said, we will. He’s a good kid, and we’ll get his mind right.”
Rogers also said the message in the locker room would not be that the extra points lost the game but rather that there is not one specific play that won or lost the game.
“We play football for 48 minutes,” Rogers said. “Forget those extra points. We should have scored more touchdowns, we should have stopped them more, and it wouldn’t have come down to that.
“I think we’ll be fine, and it’s going to be a good learning experience. We’ll see how we bounce back.”
