“It was a great ending. It’s what our goal was at the get-go – go 10-0 in the regular season and go undefeated in district,” Bearcats head coach Robby Jones said. “Check that off the list, now let’s go get ready for the playoffs and get ready to make a run to go try to win us another state championship. We’re going into it pretty healthy as well, and that’ s a big key going into the playoffs.”
The win gave Aledo (10-0, 8-0) its 135th consecutive district victory, and the Bearcats posted their fourth shutout of the season. Additionally, Aledo bruised its way to six rushing touchdowns and four rushing touchdowns to go with a fourth-quarter, 50-yard pick six by sophomore Nolan Barker. Star senior wideout Kaydon Finley caught three touchdowns from signal-caller Lincoln Tubbs, from 50, 48, and 16 yards out, respectively. Overall, he led Aledo’s eight pass catchers with five receptions for 157 yards and three scores. Meanwhile, Jeremiah Johnson led all rushers with three carries for 51 yards and two scores.
“We got a lot of guys a lot of reps tonight, so if we need some backups to step up, those guys got quality reps here the last few weeks,” Jones said. “We feel pretty good where we’re at right now. We’ve just got to keep our focus where it needs to be each and every week and go 1-0 every week in the playoffs.”
The Bearcats gained more than 620 yards and limited an improved Denton squad to 126 total yards of offense. With the regular season a part of the history books, Aledo’s focus will now shift to the postseason, as the Bearcats aim to collect six more wins and a record-extending 13th state title before the likely move to Class 6A next year.
“Normally, when the playoffs start, we see a little bit more energy than we do at the end of the regular season in practice, so we’re expecting that to happen,” Jones said. “We want these guys to come out and finish this year off the way we want to finish it, and it takes a lot of preparation, a lot of hard work and practice and they know that. They’re going to come to work Monday, and we’re going to get after it.”
The Bearcats scored a total of 503 points and surrendered only 66 points without allowing a team to score more than 14 points the entire way. With that, Aledo hopes to continue to climb the ladder of success and reach top form on their quest to return to AT&T Stadium.
“The Aledo Bearcats are always confident going into the regular season, we feel good where we are right now,” Jones said. “We just tell them every week that we can’t just rest on what we’ve done, we need to go work on getting better and finding something that we can get better at, and we’re going to do that on our playoff run.”
The Bearcats will begin their playoff run at 7 p.m. Thursday against Saginaw at Tim Buchanan Stadium.
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