Entering Friday night's opening round of the Division II-AAA playoffs, Baylor coach Phil Massey was encouraged by what he had seen of late from his players.
After battling injuries to key personnel much of the season, the Red Raiders were back to full strength. There was an air of hope that Baylor could make a run deep into the bracket.
Pope John Paul II vanquished those expectations in a hurry. The Knights scored touchdowns on their first six possessions, avenging an earlier home loss to Baylor to stun the Red Raiders at Heywood Stadium, 49-28.
Senior quarterback Ben Nixon paced the Knights with four touchdowns via three methods. He scored on runs of 32 and 1 yard, connected with tight end Jay Wright on a flea flicker covering 46 yards and hauled in a pass from receiver Brendan Keaton from 10 yards out.
PJP (6-5) amassed 543 yards of total offense - a gaudy 10.6 yards per snap - with four of their first five possessions covering at least 80 yards.
Antwan Roberts, only a sophomore, led the Knights' ground attack with 296 yards on 23 carries and a pair of touchdowns.
Baylor (4-7) trailed 14-0 after the first period and 28-7 at halftime.
"We got behind the 8-ball early," Massey said. "We harped on executing on special teams and not turning the ball over, but we had a couple of miscues. Right now, your aspirations and hopes are always to make that next step, and I felt like the last two weeks we had made some positive strides toward doing that. But tonight was a situation where we dug ourselves too deep a hole to recover from."
Gabriel Stulce, splitting time at quarterback in wildcat formations, accounted for all four of Baylor's scores. The junior had touchdown runs of 11, 7 and 6 yards and added another on a 36-yard screen pass from Lorenzo White.
Stulce finished with 77 yards on 20 carries.
But while the offense gained some momentum throughout the contest, the defense could never halt PJP's attacking offense.
"I didn't see this coming, especially from the defensive side," Massey said. "We know we've had some struggles finding our identity offensively, but from a defensive side we had been playing our best defense. Pope John Paul had a great game plan, and we just kind of fell asleep.
"It just wasn't our night. I'm disappointed in the loss, but not in our kids. I've just got to do a better job to put us in a position to win."
The loss ended Baylor's streak of nine straight years advancing at least to the state playoff quarterfinals.
PJP will visit West No. 1 seed MUS (9-0) next Friday.
Contact Paul Payne at sports@timesfreepress.com.