Hubert’s big plays help keep Pirates perfect

R.J. Hubert isn’t the Moapa Valley football team’s leading receiver. But the junior certainly was the most dangerous player on the field on Saturday.

Hubert hauled in five passes for 138 yards and two touchdowns to help the Pirates to a 40-7 home victory over Elko in the Division I-A state semifinals.

Moapa Valley (12-0) plays Desert Pines (11-1) in the state final at 3 p.m. Saturday at Bishop Gorman.

“He is a Division I athlete,” Moapa Valley coach Brent Lewis said of Hubert, who also intercepted a pass and had a tackle for loss. “And if the college coaches don’t take notice, they’re crazy.”

Hubert had TD catches of 5 and 4 yards to help the Pirates to a 21-0 halftime lead. But neither of those catches were his most impressive. The Pirates faced third-and-3 from their own 15-yard line with 21.6 seconds left in the first half.

Moapa Valley took one shot, and Zach Hymas lofted a deep ball down the middle for Hubert, who outran the coverage and caught the ball near midfield. Hubert raced for the left corner of the end zone but was pushed out of bounds at the 5 by Elko’s Adam Bullock with 10.5 seconds left in the quarter.

Two plays later, Hubert made a leaping catch for a 4-yard TD and a 21-0 halftime lead.

“R.J.’s a huge weapon,” Hymas said. “We have weapons all over the place. We can get the ball wherever. R.J. has been burning coverages and stuff, but we have so many weapons and we can go to every one of them.”

Hubert had another big catch in the second half, adjusting to an underthrown ball and making a leaping grab at the 2 for a 29-yard gain. Two plays later, Hymas hit Jay Mortensen with a 4-yard TD pass that put the Pirates up 27-0 with 1:19 to go in the third quarter.

Hymas completed 16 of 21 passes for 243 yards and three touchdowns.

“Just phenomenal,” Lewis said of his senior quarterback. “I can’t say enough about him and R.J. and Cole (Mulcock) have just been awesome all year. It’s hard to stop those kids. When Zach’s on, it’s tough to stop.”

Hymas was on Saturday. He opened the game by completing nine of his first 10 passes. He was 4-for-4 for 39 yards on the game’s opening drive, which was capped by a 5-yard TD run by Kaleb Bodily that put the Pirates up 7-0 with 4:56 to go in the first quarter.

Moapa Valley converted a pair of fourth downs to extend the drive and potentially change the momentum. Bodily had a 12-yard run on fourth-and-1 from the Elko 47. Hymas later completed a 20-yard pass to Hubert on fourth-and-9 from the 34.

“We just converted when we needed to and made plays when we needed to,” Hymas said. “The momentum was always in our favor. We just capitalized when we needed to. It was just a great performance by everybody.”

After going 56 yards on 11 plays on the opening drive, the Pirates took nine plays to go 56 yards the second time they touched the ball, this time capped by Hymas’ first TD pass to Hubert. The TD catch came on another fourth-down play.

“The first drive kind of set the tone for us,” Lewis said. “We converted a couple fourth downs and just executed pretty well. The second drive was kind of the same deal.”

Bodily added a 17-yard TD run with 11:18 to play, and Mulcock scored on a 14-yard run with 7:03 left to close the scoring. Bodily finished with 93 yards on 17 carries, and Mulcock had 63 rushing yards to go with six catches for 76 yards.

The defense was just as impressive, yielding a total of 89 yards. The Indians (9-2) were limited to one first down in the first half and finished with 12 rushing yards on 21 carries. Bo Redd and Jose Rios each had two tackles for loss, and Garrett Rose had a sack and a tackle for loss to key the Moapa Valley defense.

“We made a ton of plays offensively, but I thought our defense won the game for us,” Lewis said. “We were just completely solid. We had one defensive breakdown on one play. I can’t say enough about how solid our defense was.”