By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
As head coach Curtis Jasper put it, the Joplin football team earned seven more days together.
The Eagles scored the go-ahead touchdown two minutes into the fourth quarter and downed visiting Nixa 24-13 Friday night at Junge Stadium in the Class 6 District 3 semifinals.
Joplin (10-1) will travel to Lee’s Summit North (10-1) next week for the district championship.
“We get seven more days together and the bigger deal is we get to keep doing this and keep moving on,” Jasper said. “We’re going to work our tail off and try to earn seven more.”
Friday’s win was Joplin’s second against Nixa this season and both were close games. Possessions were at a premium in the rematch, with Nixa getting just five, but the visitors moved the ball well most of the night.
They just had trouble crossing the goal line.
Nixa drove into Joplin territory each of its first four possessions and scored just 13 points. Kaleb James kicked two field goals and Connor Knatcal threw a 13-yard touchdown pass to Austin McCracken, but Nixa also turned it over on downs at the 3-yard line.
“It got tougher the closer you got to it,” Nixa coach John Perry said. “I thought they won the line of scrimmage. We were able to get in the red zone pretty productively, but we weren’t real productive in the red zone and we missed on a few plays. There were a few things there we just missed on and in a game like this you can’t miss on those plays that you’ve worked on all year and set up.
“And we couldn’t get them off the field when we had to,” he said. “But it was a real good high school football game. Hats off to them, I thought they played really good and they did make the plays they had to make to win the game.”
James kicked a 40-yard field goal on Nixa’s opening drive for an early lead, but Joplin answered with a 65-yard scoring drive and a 4-yard plunge by Drew VanGilder to make it 7-3.
Nixa followed with its drive to the 3 where it faced a fourth-and-inches after two-straight runs for no game. The visitors had a receiver wide open at the goal line but couldn’t complete the pass.
It was 10-7 Nixa with 3:35 left in the first half after the Knatcal-to-McCracken touchdown capped a 71-yard drive where Nixa converted twice on third down and also moved the chains on a fourth-and-6.
Joplin covered 80 yards in a hurry before halftime, though, and Joseph Ipsen’s 28-yard field goal sent the teams to their locker rooms tied at 10.
CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS OF THE GAME
The Eagles drove to the Nixa 15 to open the third but fumbled on a fourth-down play, setting up an 88-yard scoring drive for Nixa. Again the visitors converted twice on third downs – and drew an offsides penalty on a fourth-and-short. But again Nixa stalled out in the red zone. Joplin’s Korey Read broke up a third-down pass and James kicked a 27-yard field goal to make it 13-10.
Joplin needed just four first downs to move 80 yards on its ensuing possession but none were bigger than the last. Facing a fourth-and-2 at the 3, quarterback Always Wright rushed to the 1 and then Quinton Renfro scored to give the Eagles a 17-13 lead they wouldn’t relinquish.
“We immediately, like we’ve done time and time again this year, any time someone’s scored, we’ve answered,” Jasper said. “They kick the field goal and we answered with a touchdown to really put pressure on them.”
And rather than kick it themselves to tie it up on that fourth-down play, Jasper was confident the Eagles could get the yardage they needed.
“I felt like the way our O-line was playing that we were going to be able to get that,” he said.
After Nixa threw incomplete on a fourth-and-6 near midfield with 6:37 remaining, Joplin put the game away. The Eagles used 11 plays to erase virtually all of that time and converted twice on fourth down – the second on a 9-yard touchdown run by Wright with just 10 seconds left on the clock.
Joplin ran the ball 48 times and gained 235 yards in the game, including 140 in the second half. The Eagles finished with 357 yards.
“Nixa’s a really good football team and we felt like if it was a clean game, which it was for the most part, that the most physical team would win and I felt like that was us tonight,” Jasper said.
Renfro had 105 yards on 28 carries and Wright ran it 10 times for 85 yards.
Wright completed 14-of-19 passes for 122 yards. Landen Atherton made five catches for 32 yards, Tyler Duley had three catches for 36 and Terrance Gibson had two for 35.
“When we needed to throw it we had the receivers come up big,” Jasper said. “Terrance made some big catches, Aidan Sampson made some big catches, LT, that whole crew. When you have the ability to do both, they can’t just stack the box on you and the bottom line is the offensive line I felt like dominated tonight.”
Nixa totaled 302 yards with 248 of those coming through the air. Knatcal was 22-of-35 passing. Kael Combs had 86 yards on six catches. Spencer Ward had three receptions for 47 yards and Jordyn Turner had three for 58.
