The Alice Coyotes will square off against the Pace Vikings at 7:00 p.m. on Friday. The teams are on pretty different trajectories at the moment (Alice has five straight wins, Pace has three straight defeats), but none of that matters once you're on the field.
Alice will head into Friday's matchup hoping to keep the good times rolling: they only won by three when they last took the field, which might have inspired the 20-point they dealt Roma on Friday. Everything went Alice's way against Roma as Alice made off with a 34-14 victory. The Coyotes might be getting used to big wins seeing as the team has won four games by 20 points or more this season.
Multiple players turned in solid performances to lead Alice to victory, but perhaps none more so than Lucian Cruz, who threw for 154 yards and three touchdowns, and also rushed for 42 yards and a touchdown. Cruz is becoming a predictor of Alice's success: when he posts at least three passing touchdowns the team is 6-1 (and 1-2 when he doesn't). Jamarion Peterson was another key pass catcher, gaining 70 total yards and two touchdowns.
On the other side of the ball, a lot of the credit has to go to Alice's defense and their three sacks. Hayden Trejo was particularly dangerous to the passing game, picking up two himself. With that strong performance, he is now averaging an impressive 5.5 total tackles per game.
Alice was unstoppable on the ground and finished the game with 260 rushing yards. That strong performance was nothing new for the team: they've now rushed for at least 161 rushing yards in five consecutive matches.
Meanwhile, Pace suffered their biggest loss since October 28, 2023 on Friday. They took a blow against Mercedes, falling 48-21. The Vikings were down 48-14 at the end of the third quarter, which was just too much to recover from.
Despite the defeat, Pace saw an underclassman step up: sophomore Juan Hernandez threw for 127 yards and two touchdowns, and also punched in a touchdown on the ground. Another player making a difference was David Melendez, who picked up 67 receiving yards and two touchdowns.
Alice is on a roll lately: they've won six of their last seven contests, which provided a nice bump to their 7-3 record this season. Those good results were due in large part to their offensive performance across that stretch, as they averaged 27.4 points per game. As for Pace, their loss dropped their record down to 6-4.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
