Lovington continues to get best of Rams

For all the success Portales High football has enjoyed in recent years, Lovington has done plenty to make the Rams’ lives miserable.

It looked like that trend might come to an end early in Friday’s matchup at Steve Loy Stadium. Then the Wildcats put together a 99-yard scoring drive and took off from there, handing PHS a 30-7 setback behind a stout defense and senior running back Ondalis Cardenas’ 110 rushing yards and two touchdowns.

“That’s what got us going,” Wildcats coach Josh Bailey, who moved up from the team’s offensive co-ordinator position to take over this season, said of the length-of-the-field drive. “Our speed was winning us the edge battle.”

Since beating the Wildcats twice en route to a Class 4A state title in 2019, the Rams dropped their fifth in a row to Lovington. They lost 29-21 on the road in last year’s regular-season finale, and 57-21 at home three weeks later in the state final.

Portales (1-1) pushed into Lovington territory on each of its first two possessions of the contest, in between forcing the Wildcats into a three-and-out. The Rams then pinned Lovington at its own 1-yard line after a punt from senior Joel Lujan.

After converting two third downs to start their possession, the Wildcats got rolling with four consecutive runs of 10 or more yards. On the next play, Cardenas broke an inside run to the left corner and scored from 25 yards out in the final minute of the period.

Lovington had three second-quarter possessions, scoring on each of them, and carried a 27-0 lead into halftime. Cardenas added another 25-yard scoring run, while junior Jayden Gutierrez and senior Alec Holguin also had rushing TDs.

“We had a couple of missed opportunities that could have been momentum builders,” Rams coach Jaime Ramirez said. “I thought we played a decent first quarter. The problem is we played a horrible second quarter all the way around.”

Portales, which lost senior quarterback Paxton Culpepper to a knee injury in the second segment, regrouped at halftime and held the Wildcats to a 31-yard field goal by junior Caleb Aranda the rest of the way. Meantime, senior Dallas Lozano moved from running back to quarterback after Culpepper’s injury and scored on a 4-yard run with nine minutes left.

“Honestly, our defense played really good football in three of the four quarters,” Ramirez said.

Ramirez said Culpepper will probably miss at least two games with his injury. Senior Gideon Smith is also likely to be out a week or two after suffering an injury against the Wildcats.

Lovington held the Rams to nine first downs – three in the opening half – and finished with a 359-158 margin in total yardage.

“That’s a good football team,” Bailey said of the Rams. “They’ve got a great defense. I felt like we lost our edge a little bit (in the second half), and you can’t do that against good teams.”

Lujan got the bulk of the carries after halftime and finished with 83 yards on 12 carries for the Rams.

PHS returns to action in a 7 p.m. tilt on Friday at Bernalillo (2-0).

“We know we have a good football team,” Ramirez said. “We’ve got to go back to the drawing board and figure out some stuff for next week.”