San Marcos and Bowie clash for 3rd place in district

The San Marcos football team has turned into Pablo Picasso over the last three weeks. 

Since the beginning of the season, head coach John Walsh has been an isolated artist trying to convince his understudies of the portrait that would be finished at the season's end. It may not have started as the perfect painting but after a few heroic performances by players on the team and a 21-point comeback last week, it gave the perfect touch to a 10-game regular season portrait.

.@RattlersSM DC Kurtis Kloiber (@kkloiber) talks this year’s defense and this week’s matchup against Austin Bowie. ⤵️

Part 1:@smdrsports pic.twitter.com/DelkoEA4PW

— Jude McClaren (@judemcclaren) October 26, 2021

“I think it just starts with Coach Walsh's vision, you know, he's been having this vision from the get-go, he's been drawing this picture for us and then he said ‘Soon enough, you (players) are gonna get the brush and you're gonna get to start painting it.’ And for the last three weeks, they've been painting,” defensive coordinator Kurtis Kloiber explained. “Sometimes they've been painting a little bit outside of the lines but they've been painting it. And they see the vision that he's presenting in front of them. They've done a really good job of seeing that and getting ready and preparing ourselves each week.”

One of the main problems in painting comes at the very end when you are contemplating and second-guessing every step for fear of messing up what you've worked so hard to complete. San Marcos is in that very stage. After starting 0-2 in district play — the beginning of its canvas — the purple and white strung together three impressive wins — the middle of the picture. Now they run into their toughest test since facing the likes of top-10 powerhouses Austin Westlake and Lake Travis in Austin Bowie. 

The Bulldogs only two losses have come by both of those powerhouses. But Bowie defeated the rest of the crowd by an average margin of 31 points per game. The team’s success copies San Marcos’: by way of the ground. Three players have 30 or more carries for the Bulldogs but the obvious bell-cow back for the Bulldogs is the district's second-leading rusher, senior running back Noah Camacho. Comacho sits with 840 yards, averaging 7.6 per carry in eight games played this season. Kloiber broke down Bowie’s offensive strengths and how they execute on Friday nights.

“They’re a run-first team, and they'll do that in multiple ways,” Kloiber said. “They run some 10 personnel — which is two by two, three by one — and then they'll put a tight end in the game, and that's 11 personnel and they're still trying to run the football. And then they'll come in and get into like 21 personnel and they’re still trying to run the football. On top of all that, those personnel groupings, they're running all kinds of screens all over the space: wide screens, rocket screens, hitches, bullet motion, you know, like a B flare or whatever, right. So those are all extensions of the run game, and then they have some vertical passing game that they like as well. But first and foremost they want to run the football.”

Last season, San Marcos had Bowie on the ropes with a 21-7 lead heading into halftime. In the second half, the Bulldogs went on to score 35 unanswered points and win the game, 42-28, mostly due to the lack of ground game and five passing touchdowns dished out by Bowie. The Rattlers couldn’t steal that win on the road.

“Last year we stopped the run game and we had a pretty big lead going into halftime. And then the second half they came out and screened us, and they screened us to death. It broke our back,” Kloiber said. “This year I was like, ‘I'm not gonna be that same guy again.’ We still have to stop the run, but the screen is an extension of the run game, so we're putting a heavy dose of work on their screen game this week.”

Fortunately for San Marcos, they have the district's leading rusher in junior running back Jaidyn Brown, who averaged 8 yards per carry last week after being forced to sit out the first half of the 49-35 win over Del Valle. Brown sits atop the leaderboard as the only rusher with over 1,000 yards this season (1,608). If San Marcos were to gain an early lead, keeping the ball away from Bowie shouldn’t be a problem with the emergence of junior quarterback Isaiah DeLeon and the extreme power of junior tailback Jake Rodriguez-Scholz. Giving up 5 touchdowns through the air will be difficult to replicate from a year ago. 

The defense for San Marcos has also been on fire, particularly in the second half this season, only relinquishing 12 points in that timeframe during the game. They also shut out Austin High in the first three quarters on Oct. 15 and held Del Valle to seven points in the last two quarters of last week's win. 

“There's a difference between playing the scout team, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and the speed of the game versus the actual speed of the game. So usually you'll notice that the first series of plays, when you're just kind of getting adjusted to the speed of the game,” Kloiber said. “I think that's what we were, but I tell the kids all the time, just play technique, play sound, keep running the calls and turnovers will happen during the course of the game. And sure enough, we got two big turnovers in the first two series last week with those fumbles and then getting on the ball.”

The Rattlers’ defense has now caused a turnover in each of its last four games but Bowie does do a good job taking care of the ball with only seven turnovers on the season. Junior middle linebacker Michael Garza has been an interception waiting to happen as of late and he thinks the defense can be even more ready for this pre-playoff type atmosphere.

“As we continue throughout the week, like Tuesday and Wednesday, we start moving. But learning the basics and, you know, getting it down for games, it’s just being more locked in, in the morning meetings at 6:30 (a.m.)” Garza said. “We’re always here at 6:30 in the morning, you know, getting that meeting right. But it's just, you gotta be locked in more mentally, that's all it is.”

With San Marcos (4-4, 3-2 district) and Austin Bowie (6-2, 3-2) sitting in third and fourth place, the winner of this game will solidify the No. 3 seed in the district heading into the playoffs.  The other will still have to push for one more win to get into the postseason. 

The painting for San Marcos continues at 7:30 p.m on Oct. 29 as San Marcos hosts Austin Bowie inside of San Marcos Toyota Rattler Stadium — the last home game of the year. San Marcos will be looking for its fourth-straight win. 

“Each week on Friday night, right, we're getting the work done on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday during the week and that's allowing us to really understand what we are painting on Friday nights,” Kloiber said. “They understand what that metaphor is and they bought in and they believe in it. 

“Our energy was really really good in practice today so I think we're heading in the right direction. We're looking forward to Bowie coming to our place and being in front of a big San Marcos home crowd and San Marcos, they'll get rowdy out there. So we're looking forward to that.”