The Nocona Indians’ season ended Friday night in the bi-district round of the playoffs for the second straight year.
De Leon won a high-scoring game 70-41 against the Indians at Weatherford.
Nocona was coming into the game after suffering its first loss of the season in the regular season finale against Alvord. While it did not affect the Indians seeding or their district title, more importantly they lost several starters for Friday’s game.
Still, Nocona was a first seed playing a fourth seed in De Leon with a 6-4 record and a 3-3 record in district that was coming off three straight losses.
While most bi-district match-ups between a first and fourth seed are one-sided towards the first seed, the Indians knew that would not be the case.
Last year’s one-sided playoff loss to Bangs along with every other team in the district losing its bi-district games showed the teams from district five were a lot tougher from front to back than district six.
The Bearcats showed that to start the game. Featuring a balanced running attack with a big bruising running back or a quick quarterback who also liked to throw the ball down the field to his speedy receivers all while running an up-tempo offense, it was a tough group to stop all night.
After De Leon opened the game with a quick touchdown march, Nocona answered on its second play when Brady McCasland rescued a low snap and found Charlie Fuller wide open near the sideline where he ran the rest of the way for a 67-yard touchdown pass to tie the score at 7-7.
It would be as close as the game would stay.
After the Bearcats took the lead, the Indians drew up a trick play where Jose Gomez threw a pass down the field. Unfortunately, the open receiver behind the defense dropped the pass.
Later after Nocona threw an interception De Leon connected on a long touchdown pass to lead 21-7 heading into the second quarter.
The Indians cut the score back to one touchdown as McCasland scored on an 11-yard run on fourth down to make it 21-14.
The Bearcats scored fast after a long pass completion set up a short run. Nocona faced a fourth down and turned the ball over again on an interception that more or less served as a punt. De Leon scored again to make it 35-14 with less than a minute before halftime.
Nocona still moved the ball within scoring range thanks to some personal foul calls on defense. Unfortunately, what would have been McCasland’s second touchdown pass to Fuller was called back due to holding and the Indians went into halftime frustrated and behind by three touchdowns.
The Indians answered the call to start the second half as they drove down the field and scored on a Johnny Stone nine-yard run to make it 35-21.
Unfortunately, the Bearcats answered fast. Another long pass set up another short touchdown run to make it 42-21.
To make matters worse, Nocona fumbled the ball away during the kick-off return and De Leon went down to score and go up 49-21.
The Indians special teams got the touchdown back as Caden Gaston took the kick-off back for a 78-yard touchdown.
Still, Nocona could not keep the Bearcats off the board as they scored on a 30-yard run up the middle.
The Indians did not give up though as the offense answered with a successful drive that ended with McCasland scoring on a short run. Nocona trailed 56-34 heading into the fourth quarter.
The Indian offense faltered for the rest of the game as they tried desperately to score fast, but the players were wearing down with many also playing on defense.
De Leon also limited the chances by slowing down the tempo and scoring on two more time-consuming touchdown drives.
Nocona’s final score came on special teams again as the Bearcats decided to kick deep after avoiding Gaston since his last return. He took advantage and scored in almost the exact same way on an 85-yard kick-off return.
The Indians tried to score one more in the final minutes on a deep pass following a fleaflicker that was intercepted to ice the game.
De Leon won 70-41.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of the mid-week edition of the Bowie News.