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In the game of football, it is said that defense wins championships. With that thought in mind, the Basehor-Linwood High School football team looked like a team wanting to make a bid for the postseason as the Bobcats' "bend but don't break" defense kept the Mill Valley Jaguars out of the end zone last Friday night.

The tough defense helped the Bobcats to a 14-5 Homecoming victory at Kiester Field.

In fact, it was remarkable Mill Valley didn't hit pay dirt. On their first four possessions of the second half, the Jaguars got inside the Bobcats' 21-yard line. And on three of those possessions Mill Valley got down to the Bobcats' three-yard line, only to be denied by Basehor-Linwood's stubborn defense.

Matt Dukes, Basehor-Linwood junior running back, was brought down by a pair of Mill Valley defenders, but not before picking up a nice gain in the Bobcats' 14-5 win on Friday night.

"Our defense was tremendous," said Bobcats head coach Paul Brown. "The goal-line stands showed that the kids are becoming tougher and tenacious and just deciding, 'Hey, this isn't happening. You're not getting in.'"

Twice, Mill Valley got inside the Basehor-Linwood one-yard line, only to be denied by the Bobcats defensive line.

"We missed opportunities for certain," Mill Valley coach George Radell said. "We got whipped up front on both sides of the ball all night long. I didn't do a very good job and there were some times where we didn't execute."

Brown praised his defense more, saying, "It was nice for us to have those kinds of stops. This was a team that has been rolling on some people. All night, our defense played really well. We went after them and we hit hard. We gave up some yards on some passes, especially late in the game, but beyond that, our defense played tremendous."

While the Bobcat defensive line was mostly responsible for halting Mill Valley's offense, the Bobcat offensive line was responsible for helping B-L roll up 274 yards on the ground. BLHS had two players rush for over 100 yards in the same game for the first time in five years. Matt Dukes had 110 yards on 18 carries and Joey Barlow had 100 yards on 13 rushes.

"Our offensive line opened up some big holes," Brown said. "We only had 14 points to show for it and that's frustrating, but I don't think they really stopped us all night long. There were some situations where we were deep in our own territory after the goal-line stands that we had to be conservative with what we called, but beyond that, we pretty much did the things we wanted to do."

Dukes opened the scoring in the game with a seven-yard run halfway through the first quarter, erasing the memory of a fumble he lost in the opening minutes.

After Mill Valley cut the lead in half with a 27-yard field goal two minutes into the second quarter, Bobcat QB Nick Verbenec broke free for a 35-yard touchdown on a fourth-and-three play with 2:39 left in the first half. Verbenec added the two-point conversion after the snap on the PAT attempt was high, forcing the junior signal-caller to scramble, eventually into the end zone.

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