Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Paul Terry leads the Greyhounds, and is fifth in the Lone Star Conference with 491 yards on 107 carries with five touchdowns. Eastern New Mexico faces Western New Mexico 7 p.m. Saturday in its homecoming game.
PORTALES — By the time Saturday is wrapped up, Eastern New Mexico hopes to be celebrating not a chili bowl, but a Chile Bowl.
That’s the tag being attached for the first time to the cross-state rivals, heading into Saturday’s homecoming game. The inaugural Chile Bowl is important for Eastern because it’s the homecoming game and another LSC match-up. It’s important for the Mustangs because they’re still seeking their first victory.
There’s no looking ahead to the rest of the LSC schedule, including ENMU’s Wagon Wheel Game next week at West Texas A&M or Western’s home game next week against defending national champ Texas A&M-Commerce. When you’re a combined 1-10, you can’t afford to look past anybody.
“When you’re at the point we’re at, you’ve just got to get a win,” Greyhound coach Kelley Lee said. “We’re trying to get a win, get momentum. We’re focused on what we’ve got to do to get a win this week.”
Both teams are coming off some of their rougher losses of the season — the Mustangs suffering a 52-0 loss to Angelo State, the Greyhounds a 48-24 loss at Tarleton State where the Texans scored the game’s first 34 points.
“We started pretty well the first quarter. We didn’t generate anything in the second quarter, and defensively we couldn’t stop them. You can’t dig holes against good teams like that.”
The Greyhounds (1-5, 1-3) got on the scoreboard early in the third quarter, when Johnny Smith took a Russell Montoya pass 62 yards. Eastern also got rushing touchdowns from Paul Terry, Wyatt Strand and Kazyan Martin on a 329-yard night. The Texas rolled out 552 yards of offense, including 275 rushing yards on 50 carries.
Meanwhile, the Mustangs managed just 257 yards against the Rams and trailed 21-0 less than a minute into the second quarter. They’re last in the LSC in both scoring offense (11.2 points per game) and scoring defense (38.8 ppg). Lee, however, notes the Mustangs have hung with their opponents for the most part.
“Obviously, they didn’t play well versus Angelo. But they’ve played two Division I schools and played them pretty well. They were leading Idaho before halftime.
“Against WT, they were only down 17-10 until late in the third quarter. Against UTPB they had a 14-point lead with five minutes to play and they lost. They’ve played well at times, and we’re expecting their best effort.”
Eric Beebe is 13th in the LSC with 257 yards on 23 catches, with two going for touchdowns.
“Offensively,” Lee said, “they run the RPO (run/pass/option) game and do that well. (Junior quarterback Blayne Anderson has) been under a lot of pressure, but he does a good job of avoiding it. He doesn’t avoid it by taking off and running it, but by just avoiding it and keeping the play alive. Defensively, they’re a little undersized but make a lot of plays on second effort.”
Lee expects to have a full roster for Saturday, but a few offensively linemen and defensive backs will miss a few practices to recover from minor injuries.
