WALES — The way Lisbon’s offense was controlling the ball and the clock in the second half of Saturday’s critical Class D South rivalry game, its defense had reason to believe one stop of rival Oak Hill midway through the fourth quarter would be enough to secure not only a win but a bye in the first round of the playoffs.

Riley Quatrano provided the stop and then some with an interception, and the Greyhounds’ power running game took care of the final five minutes of a 16-13 win.

“I think we really wanted it,” Quatrano said. “We know they’re our big rivals and the winner gets a first-round bye. Our coach (Chris Kates) has been talking about it all week. He obviously cared about the final score, but he really wanted us to show some character, and I feel like as a team we showed that today.”

With the win, Lisbon ended the regular season at 5-3 and earned the No. 2 seed and a bye to the D South semifinals. Oak Hill dropped to 4-4 to earn the third seed and will host No. 6 Madison next week, with the winner advancing to face the Greyhounds.

After battling through a scoreless first half, neither defense could get off the field in the second half until Quatrano picked off Oak Hill’s Gavin Rawstron (10-for-16, 126 yards, TD, INT) near the Greyhounds’ 30 with 6:30 remaining.

“I saw (Rawstron) was rolling right,” Quatrano said, “and I saw, I think it was number 11 (Tiger Hopkins) cross my face, so I just kind of floated with it. I saw that he was open and I closed and picked it off.”

Quatrano’s return and an Oak Hill personal foul tacked on at the end of the play set the Greyhounds up at Oak Hill’s 32 with five minutes left. Running backs Cam Bourget and Justin Le converted on fourth and third down, respectively, to keep the chains and the clock moving until Oak Hill ran out of timeouts and QB Seth Leeman was able to take a knee inside the Raider 5 to run out the clock.

Bourget (21 carries, 79 yards, TD) and Le (11 carries, 43 yards, TD) combined with Leeman (10 carries, 74 yards) for 126 yards on the ground in the second half as the Greyhounds limited the Raiders to only three possessions in the half.

“At halftime, we talked about our blocks and we adjusted,” Bourget said. “I mean, we’d been practicing all week and it’s nothing we really haven’t seen. We just needed a reminder.”

“I think (Lisbon) played keep-away,” Oak Hill coach Stacen Doucette said. “I thought we moved the ball when we had it. They had a good offensive plan, playing keep-away with ground control. They had a very good second half on offense.”

The Raiders delivered the first points of the game following Rawstron’s 20-yard kick return to start the second half allowed them to start at midfield. After Rawstron converted a fourth-and-1 with a four-yard run to keep the drive alive, he found Liam Rodrigue in one-on-one coverage down the right sideline for a 27-yard touchdown pass. Rodrigue’s extra point made it 7-0 Oak Hill.

Lisbon responded with a 13-play, 62-yard drive on its first offensive series of the half, capped by Le’s one-yard plunge on fourth down to make it 7-6. Leeman ran in the two-point conversion to give the Greyhounds their first lead, 8-7, with 1:56 left in the third quarter.

“Oak Hill has some pretty good athletes, so they were pursuing the ball pretty fast in the first half and we were having a hard time running some of our shotgun stuff,” Kates said. “So we tried to adjust a little bit and get more inside and had a little bit of success there. Rather than try and hit big plays we just tried to grind out drives and had a little bit of success there.”

“They score so fast, too, so it’s good if you can keep them off the field,” Kates added. “They’re a great team and most likely we’ll see them again in two weeks.”

The Raiders scored quickly on their next possession, driving 78 yards on five plays in just 1:19 to regain the lead. Rawstron completed passes of 15, 13 and 13 yards to Sam Lindsay, Hopkins and Caden Thompson, respectively, to get them to Lisbon’s 3. On first down, Lisbon appeared to have Thompson stopped in the backfield on a run to the left, but the sophomore shook off a tackler, reversed field and ran around the right side for the touchdown. Lindsay was stopped short of the goal-line on the two-point pass attempt from Rawstron to keep it at 13-8 Raiders with 33 seconds to go in the third.

Lisbon started its ensuing series at its own 12 and, with the exception of a big 30-yard completion by Leeman to Robbie Dick on third-and-7, stayed on the ground for 13 plays and burned six minutes off the clock once Bourget ran in what proved to be the winning score from the 1 with 6:30 left. Leeman tacked on the two-point run again to make it 16-13.

Oak Hill had a short field to work with on its first two possessions of the game, starting at Lisbon’s 42 and its own 44, respectively. But Lisbon came up with stops on fourth-and-3 at its own 35 to snuff out the first drive and on third-and-11 at its own 40 to snuff out the second.

Le sacked Rawstron for losses of 11 and nine yards on the Raiders’ first drive of the second quarter to help turn the battle for field position in Lisbon’s favor, but neither team ventured into the red zone in the first half.

“The line was just wide open and I had to fill the gaps in and create pressure,” Le said. “He couldn’t get a pass off and I just kept hitting him for those losses,” Le said.

“It was an all-around team effort,” Bourget said. “You can’t throw the ball when no one’s open and we just closed in on him.”

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