Dominant Bearcats aim to end regular season on high note

Through nine regular season games, the No. 1 Aledo Bearcats have been a model of consistency on defense and have grown leaps and bounds on the offensive side of the ball. With one more regular season game left, Aledo (9-0, 7-0) looks to put the ball in the hands of senior quarterback Lincoln Tubbs, who has helped engineer 206 points and has amassed 688 passing yards, 152 rushing yards and 11 total touchdowns in his last three games.

“We’ve seen a lot of confidence coming about especially in the last couple of games,” Bearcats head coach Robby Jones said of Tubbs. “He’s out there, he feels comfortable running the offense and he’s doing a really good job of getting us in positions to score a lot of points now.”

Along with Tubbs, the entire Aledo offense has been playing with great synergy and production. Furthermore, the complementary play by the defense has been evidenced by its consistency, producing another shutout last week for a stingy 7.3 points-per-game average.

“I think this is a very close-knit group, so they’re playing hard for one another right now, and that’s leading to us playing a lot better football,” Jones said. “We’re trying to make sure that their buddies are being successful and blocking for them and trying to make plays for their buddies. It’s a great thing to see and I think that’s one of the reasons why we’re starting to see an improvement within this team. They are so close-knit, they love one another and want to accomplish great things together.”

Jones said he hopes to see Aledo take care of business early to allow reserves to get plenty of quality reps against Denton High, who enters the contest with a 4-5 overall record. Additionally, Aledo aims to keep its lofty goals intact in its regular-season finale.

“It’s very important because we want to go out with an undefeated regular season, undefeated in district and get that 135th district win in a row, but we also need to make sure that we’re rolling into the playoffs on a high note,” Jones said. “We’ve played pretty well the last couple of weeks, so we don’t want to take a step back in the last regular season game. We want to make sure we are continuing on the upward trend and make sure our guys stay healthy coming out of this game. We want to get a lot of guys some good reps because you never know when you might have to call upon the second-team guy during the playoff run. We can do that by taking care of business early in this game.”

Last year, Aledo corralled the Broncos in a 62-0 romp. This season, Denton (4-5, 3-4) has shown improvement and increased competitiveness, evidenced by the two-win increase from last year. Additionally, Denton is averaging 29.9 points per game offensively compared to the 15.6-point-per-game average they posted in 2024, and the defense has surrendered almost 12 points fewer from a season ago.

“One of the things that we’ve seen about Denton is they’re playing a lot harder than they did last year,” Jones said. “They’ve got a good scheme offensively and a good scheme defensively, so it’s not going to be a pushover like maybe it might have been last year. We’re going into this game ready to play and to go execute at the level we’ve been executing at in the last couple of weeks. We want to continue to progress, continue to get better each and every week, which is our main focus. This week is not only just to beat Denton High, but also to show that we are continuing to get better and better on offense and defense.”

The Bearcats will play away from home in the district finale. The game will take place at 7 p.m. Friday at the C.H. Collins Athletic Complex.