{"id":108680,"date":"2015-10-22T22:07:22","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T04:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-understands-playoff-implications-of-sangre-de-cristo\/"},"modified":"2015-10-22T22:07:22","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T04:07:22","slug":"mancos-understands-playoff-implications-of-sangre-de-cristo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-understands-playoff-implications-of-sangre-de-cristo\/","title":{"rendered":"Mancos understands playoff implications of Sangre de Cristo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Axel
Axel Bonde rushed for over 200 yards against Sierra Grande last week. He will be key for the Blue Jays against Sangre de Cristo on Saturday.<\/span>Jardyn Angell\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Mancos Blue Jays are fully aware of their status in the Mountain league standings.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re currently sitting in third with a 3-1 conference record, behind Dove Creek and Sargent, which are both 4-0 in league play.<\/p>\n

On Saturday the Blue Jays will take on the fourth-place Sangre de Cristo Thunderbirds, and they grasp the significance of the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo have any chance of getting into the playoffs, we\u2019ve got to beat these guys,\u201d said co-head coach Bill Parsons.<\/p>\n

The Thunderbirds won the Mountain conference last year, and co-head coach Josh Gardner expects them to be good again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI expect them to play pretty strong on defense,\u201d he said. \u201cOffense, same thing. They\u2019ve got a good left tackle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other than their three first-half fumbles last week, the Blue Jays may want to stick with the same game plan.<\/p>\n

In their previous games, Mancos rushed for 535 yards against Sierra Grande, while the Thunderbirds allowed over 400 yards rushing to Fowler.<\/p>\n

Parsons and Gardner should let the big dogs eat and give Everett Strazza-Whalen, Axel Bonde and Drew Morgan plenty of carries.<\/p>\n

Sophomore safety Kaleb Hargraves had been having a stellar season before going down last week with a broken collar bone.<\/p>\n

His absence may have raised questions of how the Blue Jays secondary would respond.<\/p>\n

But Richard Martinez answered them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe sure hate to lose Kaleb,\u201d Parsons said. \u201cBut thankfully Richard was there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Filling in for Hargraves, Martinez had 12 tackles and an interception against Sierra Grande.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe saved our bacon a couple of times,\u201d said Parsons.<\/p>\n

The Blue Jays know that if they want to have a shot at the playoffs, they need to take care of business on Saturday against Sangre de Cristo.<\/p>\n

Then, they will travel to Dove Creek next week for the regular season finale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

currently third in conference<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5770],"tags":[83],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-108680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-mancos"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108680"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=108680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}