Half Moon Bay holds off Menlo-Atherton in Bay football opener

It came on the second-to-last play of the game when HMB’s Ayden Courtney chased down and sacked M-A quarterback Billy Johnson for a 20-yard loss near midfield.

With no timeouts and the clock under 10 seconds, the Bears made a desperate heave to the end zone that was knocked down by the Cougars on the final play of the game.

Half Moon Bay 22, Menlo-Atherton 21.

“We made one more play than they did,” said HMB head coach Keith Holden. “We made just enough plays.”

It was a see-saw of emotions on both sidelines over the final few minutes. HMB took the lead with 7:50 to play in the game when Liam Harrington hooked up with Owen Miller for a 4-yard touchdown pass and a 22-21 Cougars’ lead.

HMB had a chance to extend its lead, but M-A made sure that a field goal would win it for the Bears when Johno Price blocked a 26-yard field goal attempt.

M-A took possession at the Cougars’ 27 and marched down the field. The Bears caught a break on a defensive pass interference call on a fourth down incompletion to keep the drive alive.

The Bears eventually moved to the Cougars’ 4-yard line, but a holding call, followed by a delay-of-game and a false start penalty moved the Bears back to the 26.

M-A head coach Chris Saunders was forced to call a timeout — his last — to avoid another delay penalty. But when Courtney threw Johnson to the ground with only a handful of seconds left on the clock, M-A had no choice but to throw up the Hail Mary.

The Bears’ prayers weren’t answered.

“I had a big problem with some of those penalties,” Saunders said. “Offensively, we left 14 to 21 points on the field. We dropped two touchdowns on the first drive. Too many drops in our offense.

“Our errors were in the multitudes.”

HMB (1-0 PAL Bay, 5-0 overall) caught a break when M-A receiver Jurrion Dickey was ruled out because of injury and maybe he would have made a difference. Those passes off receiver’s fingertips may have been caught by the Oregon-commit.

And yet, the Bears still had their chances to beat HMB.

But the Cougars are one of the most well-coached and disciplined teams around and when they execute their offense, they can be hard to stop.

And when Holden goes into his playbook, you don’t know what he might come up with. The Cougars scored the first two times they had the ball. The first came on a conventional drive that saw them go 80 yards on nine plays, with PJ Modena plowing into the end zone from a yard out. A Liam Harrington-to-Dio Lucido for the 2-point conversion gave HMB an 8-0 lead.

After forcing M-A (0-1, 2-3) to turn the ball over downs, the Cougars went to the air — but not in the conventional fashion. At the M-A 44, the Cougars ran a double handoff reverse. But instead of sweeping back to his right for a run, Miller pulled up and lofted a pass downfield to a wide open Kai Zanette, who was finally corralled after a 50-yard gain down to the Bears’ 4.

Three plays later, Modena pounded into the end zone from a yard out for a 15-0 lead with 4:32 left in the first quarter.

“I don’t call them trick plays,” Holden said of the running back pass. “We might call them ‘momentum plays.’”

But if anyone was thinking this game would turn into a HMB rout were quickly brought back to earth as M-A needed just one play to get on the scoreboard.

Starting their next drive on their own 22, M-A running back Sherrod Smith took the handoff, started left, hit the hole and like being shot out of a cannon, streaked 78 yards for a touchdown to get M-A back in the game, 15-7.

“We saw him on film,” Holden said of Smith. “[Dickey] is unreal, but [Smith] is not too bad, either.”

HMB’s Modena and M-A’s Smith both had big games. Smith rushed for 155 yards and the score on 16 carries. Modena had 130 yards on 23 carries and two touchdowns.

“He’s a stud,” Holden said of Modena. “I always believe in JP.”

M-A pulled to 15-14 when Jordan Masuisui rumbled13 yards for a with 7:42 left in the first half.

The Bears received the second-half kickoff and put together their best drive of the night. Starting from their own 25, the Bears used 14 plays to get to the 1-yard line and on the 15th play, Smith went in from a yard out to give M-A its first lead of the game, 21-15 with 5:27 left in the third.

The Bears ran 15 plays in the first two quarters, combined.

But HMB answered M-A’s long drive with a lengthy possession of its own. The Cougars, starting from their own 46, used up the final 5:26 of the third quarter and moved to the M-A 7.

Facing fourth-and-goal at the 4, Harrington took the snap and rolled left. He scrambled around to buy time before lofting a pass to the back of the end zone that Miller caught for the score.

The extra point gave the Cougars a 22-21 lead with 7:50 to play and set up the final dramatic minutes.

While everyone else will most likely call Half Moon Bay’s win an upset, would the Cougars call it that?

“I’m crazy. I always think we’re going to win,” Holden said. “Whether it’s an upset or not, it's a quality win.”