The foundation for Kanab’s 1A semifinal win over Enterprise on Friday was realistically laid the week before when it survived Duchesne’s upset bid in the quarterfinals to win by a single point.
Kanab beat Duchesne in the regular season, but beating the defending champs a second time proved to be much more difficult and nearly didn’t happen.
For Kanab’s players, the scenario was all the evidence they needed to believe they could beat Enterprise in the semifinals at Southern Utah University despite losing to the Wolves earlier in the season.
“That helped me with the boys to help them understand how hard it is to beat a good team two times, we barely survived that one,” said Kanab coach JR Quarnberg.
“I told the kids that pregame, it’s so hard to beat a good team twice, not that you want to lose the first one that’s for sure, but we felt like a lot of things didn’t go our way in the first one and we were right in it, so we felt confident coming in,” added Quarnberg.
To help flip that script, Kanab’s coaches made a defensive gamble which paid huge dividends as the Cowboys beat Enterprise 26-15 to advance to next Friday’s 1A state championship against No. 1 seed Layton Christian in St. George.
Leading 12-7 at the break, Kanab extended the lead to 26-7 with a couple of early fourth quarter scores to put the game out of reach and secure its place in the title game.
Quarnberg challenged his seniors this week to rise to the occasion of the moment and he believes that was one of the keys to the win.
“In these playoffs games, and I told the seniors this at the start of the week, these wins this time of year a lot of times they come on the shoulders of your seniors and they needed to step up big, and they did,” said Quarnberg.
Another key was the calculated risk to made a significant defensive adjustment.
In the first meeting back in September that Enterprise won, 22-14, the Wolves rushed for 260 yards and controlled the line of scrimmage. In the rematch, Kanab stacked the box to stop the run and dared the Wolves to win it through the air.
“We made some big changes on defense, which was a risk, we debated do we work on our base stuff and simplify and do what we always do or do we make some changes, and we chose to make some changes defensively and we feel like they really helped us,” said Quarnberg.
As a team, Enterprise rushed for 155 yards on Friday which was 105 yards less than the previous meeting.
“We feel like we haven’t played our best defense for a couple weeks and it’s had us all a little bit rattled, so it was great to come out and play a good defensive game,” said Quarnberg.
Kanab’s coach was quick to add that his defense will need to be even better next week to try and slow the potent rushing attack from Layton Christian.
“Hopefully we can be rally behind this performance and play some tough defense next week,” said Quarnberg.
Of the seniors who stepped up big for Kanab in the semis, one of the most notable was Derek Brown, who had never played football prior to this season. It started with a clutch catch late in the first half that helped Kanab regain a 12-7 lead at the half.
Parker Franklin put Kanab ahead 6-0 at the 2:24 mark of the second quarter on a two-yard score, but Enterprise answered quickly with a scoring drive that Kyron Bracken capped with a 5-yard TD run for the 7-6 lead with 36 seconds left in the half.
Thirty-six seconds is rarely enough time for most 1A teams to put together a scoring drive, but Kanab found a way. A big kick return by Waylon White helped set Kanab up with decent field position, and then Brown caught a 48-yard pass up the sideline setting up his team with first and goal at the 5-yard line.
Griffen Bone punched it in two plays later with four seconds left in the half, a quick score that put Kanab back in the lead for good.
On the first play of the fourth quarter, Brown hauled in a one-handed, fourth-down catch for a 20-yard TD that stretched the lead to 19-7. Five minutes later Kanab capitalized on Enterprise’s second fumble of the game on a Bone 1-yard plunge that put the game out of reach, 26-7.