Rams suffer first loss at St. Michael's

SANTA FE — The old saying, "Football is a game of inches," could certainly apply to the Portales Rams on Saturday afternoon at St. Michael's.

Unfortunately for the Rams, they came up just inches short at two crucial moments in the fourth quarter. The result: St. Michael's inched away with a 21-20 victory.

After a Tyrese Dawson 5-yard touchdown run with 1:20 left in the game closed the gap to within a point, Dawson was slow to get up. He went down awkwardly as he was tackled into the end zone, and took several minutes to get up.

Portales (3-1) attempted a 2-point conversion to take the lead, in part because its starting kicker was unavailable for the game. Backup quarterback Julian Urioste kept it himself and appeared to extend the ball out and touch the pylon, but the officials said he was short.

"I thought he scored," Rams coach Jaime Ramirez said. "Unfortunately, we didn't make it in. I thought we did, but it's just one of those deals. it's their judgement."

Just minutes before, the Rams came up a little short. Trailing 21-14 with just over six minutes to play, Portales had put together a 10-play, 68-yard drive and burned all three of its timeouts.

Facing a fourth-and-goal from the Horsemen 2, Dawson's keeper came up just shy of breaking the plane, as his knee was ruled down before he could stretch the ball out. For the Rams, it was all part of a frustrating second half in which they were outgained on the ground, 115-26.

"Our offensive line did a heck of a job up front — they were opening up those holes and getting us five or six yards a carry and kept moving the chains," St. Michael's coach Joey Fernandez explained. "Our game plan was to come out and run the ball a little more than we did last week. But, we wanted to throw the ball, too. We couldn't get that throwing game early, that hurt us a little bit."

St. Michael's (3-1) grounded and pounded its way to a seven-play, 70-yard drive that resulted in a Miguel Montoya 9-yard scamper to take the early lead. However, the Horsemen tried to put the ball in the air in the second quarter, resulting in two Rams interceptions.

It was a Horsemen lost fumble that set up the Rams for their first score, as a sack/fumble gave the Rams possession at the Horsemen 14.

Dawson cashed-in with a 3-yard score, plus a two-point conversion to give the Rams its only lead of the game.

St. Michael's soon responded with a score of its own, but two possessions later, a Josiah Lucero interception gave the Rams the ball at midfield, which eventually resulted in another Dawson score, tying the game at 14, late in the first half.

The Horsemen went back to the ground game with a 14-play, 67-yard drive early in the third quarter.

A 1-yard dive by Joey Fernandez Jr. put the Horsemen ahead for good, capping off a drive that lasted 8:29. St. Michael's rushed for 190 yards on the day, despite coming into the game as a pass-heavy team.

"They always start out running the ball," Ramirez said. "I thought we came out flat. They did a good job - they had their boys ready to play. They stuck it to us and I think we misfired on a lot of things on offense."

Now that the defending 4A state champs have experienced their first loss in nearly a year — it was 358 days ago when they were upset by Dexter as the only mark on a 12-1 season — the plan for Ramirez' squad is to go back to the drawing board.

By the way, it's 7 p.m. Friday at Dexter. And they are planning for the possibility they'll have to go in without Dawson.

"It looked like he sprained his knee. We'll find out a little bit more," Ramirez explained. "We didn't execute much on offense, so we've got to get back and get better."