Trinity (Texas) athletics photo; UMHB athletics photo by AMZImages.com

By Riley Zayas
Special to D3sports.com

Jerheme Urban isn’t one for moral victories. Or dwelling on last year’s results. He’s not going to hang his hat on a game played almost exactly a year ago. Because he doesn’t have to.

On Nov. 20, 2021, Trinity (Texas) made its first appearance in the postseason since 2011, having won the Southern Athletic Association title outright under Urban, a former NFL wide receiver who, as a player under Trinity coach Steve Mohr, led the Tigers to what remains their only Stagg Bowl appearance, in 2002. For four quarters, Urban’s squad challenged heavily favored UMHB in Belton, before a late touchdown from the Crusaders sealed a 13-3 win for the hosts, who would win their next four games by a margin of 172-62. 

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Trinity gained national notice for how well it battled the eventual national champion, holding an explosive offense mostly dormant. And that performance brought about additional expectations heading into 2022. It was the result some pointed to when explaining the reason for Trinity’s top 10 ranking to open the season. But no longer is that narrow loss the shining point on its resume. Trinity beat then-No. 8 Wheaton in a week two overtime thriller and strong SAA rivals in Berry and Birmingham-Southern, running through the regular season with a flawless 10-0 mark. 

“It was a great step for the program, to win the conference title outright, but I’ll be honest, we really just hammer the here and now,” Urban said Tuesday. “I’m not a moral victory type of guy. We don’t want to be known for who we lose to.”

As fate would have it, Trinity will get another shot at UMHB, when the two Lone Star state powers battle in Saturday’s second round in San Antonio. But whether it be UMHB or not, whether the narrative of a rematch and revenge is at play, Trinity comes off its first playoff win in program history in two decades with a rather stoic mentality. 

“I think the cool thing to look at is how much work has gone in since the clock struck zero back in Belton last year,” Trinity quarterback Tucker Horn. “There’s been so much planning, so many throw sessions and lift sessions. A lot of things have gone into the process of getting back to this point. 

“We’re not looking ahead, we’re not looking at the past. We’re just trying to go 1-0. Every week presents its own individual set of opportunities.” 

One hundred and sixty miles north, up I-35, through the state’s capital of Austin, and into the heart of central Texas, Aphonso Thomas is also thinking about the opportunities before him, those of UMHB, and the senior class he is a part of. No team still standing in these playoffs have more players involved in a Stagg Bowl than UMHB does, with 30 returners from last year’s squad that won the national title in convincing fashion. 

“We know we’re playing for a ring, and we know it is win or go home,” the UMHB running back recently said. “When that’s in your mind it’s very easy to have the energy you need to play the most successful game you can. Because every game can be your last…we don’t want that.” 

Thomas is one of those 30 returners, the starting running back who carried the ball 13 times for 65 yards and a pair of touchdowns in the national championship game. In the case of this week’s rematch with Trinity, Thomas was the one who took a handoff with 3:14 left in a 6-3 contest a year ago, broke through the Tiger defensive front, and into the open field, scoring the only touchdown in the game from 17 yards out. It was enough to lift UMHB to victory. 

“It was a very good moment to experience,” Thomas recalls. “I’m just glad I could be there for my team in a time of need. Obviously I had great blocking from the offensive linemen too.” 

The result of that contest, by admission of both sides, was a pivotal point in the trajectory of each program. For Urban and his team, the loss was tough to swallow as any playoff defeat is, but concurrently, it was a clarification that they were on a fast track to restoring the Trinity program to its former glory. For UMHB, it was a necessary point of refocus, shaping what would turn into a fairly dominant playoff run. 

““We were kind of in that mode of, ‘We’re playing a team from another conference that we haven’t lost to in a long time,’” UMHB head coach Larry Harmon said. “Trinity played us really tough. It made us realize, everybody in this tournament is good.”

“After we won, it definitely got us right,” Thomas added. “It opened our eyes to realize that playoff football is very different. It made us lock in for the rest of the playoffs.” 

Some would overlook such statements. For a program that has played in the national title game in four of the last five playoffs, saying that the Crusaders needed a sort of “wake-up call” might  come as a surprise. 

But quarterback Kyle King was in his first full season as the starter, Thomas was back on a college football roster for the first time since 2017, and the offensive line was still meshing, with Jeffery Sims in his first season as the starting center. Simply put, several of the key cogs in the title run had played very limited roles the last time UMHB was in the postseason, or in the case of King, Thomas, and a handful of others, not on the field at all. 

But growth can occur rapidly, as it has for UMHB’s offense, now No. 9 in the country in total offense, averaging 486.4 yards per game. The talent, fused with experience, was evident in last Saturday’s first-round rout of Huntingdon, as the Crusaders shut out the USA South conference champion, 54-0, behind 651 yards of total offense. 

“We all count on each other to do his job in those [pressure] situations, not only because that’s what’s expected of us, but because we’ve done it before,” Thomas said. “We all have that kind of trust to be able to [win it all] again. The senior leadership has played a big role. We have some young guys in key spots, but you won’t be able to tell because they know we expect greatness out of them, just like they expect greatness out of us.” 

Throughout the last several weeks, Harmon has seen the growth of his team emerge, with the senior class taking charge, as Thomas noted, 

“I thought today was the day where our seniors really took the reins as far as, ‘We’re going to be the leaders of this thing, and this is the direction we’re going,’” Harmon said following the win over McMurry in the regular season finale. “‘If you guys want to be with us, follow along.’ They were strong all week.” 

Horn, the SAA’s Offensive Player of the Year, headlines a similarly stacked senior class for Trinity, that includes key returners in linebacker Caleb Harmel, wide receiver Ryan Merrifield and running back Justin Carmouche. The experience has been just as critical for Trinity in its undefeated season as it has been for UMHB, one of a number of similarities between the programs. But as Horn notes, the Tigers have learned to embrace the “new”, just as much as they have relied on the old. 

“What I’ve found to be so cool is how resilient this team is,” Horn said. “We only lost a few guys from last year’s team, but coming into this year, it’s a totally new team. The experiences we were going to have were going to be different from last year. The way we were going to attack situations was going to be different from last year. There have been times this year when we’ve hit a little bit of adversity, and it’s been cool to see guys step up to the plate with a lot of confidence because of all the hard work they’ve put in.”

Exhibit A of that resilience came in the late minutes of Saturday’s first-round win over Hardin-Simmons. Horn and the Trinity offense walked onto the field with the game hanging in the imbalance, score knotted at seven apiece, and rain falling with increased force as a weather cell swept across central Texas. 7:30 remained in the contest, and despite having been challenged against the Hardin-Simmons defense for the vast majority of the contest, the Tigers had no shortage of confidence. Three first downs and a 4-yard run got Trinity into a third-and-6 situation, on the HSU 38-yard line, with under three minutes left. Horn completed a 38-yard touchdown pass to Merrifield along the sideline, putting the Tigers in front. 

HSU nearly countered that score, if not for a late red zone stop by the defense on consecutive attempted passes to the end zone, as time expired. 

“Our region is full of great football programs,” Urban said. “We knew it was going to be a tough battle. But we had a season full of experiences to draw on. We had been in that moment before.” 

That is precisely what makes Saturday’s duel intriguing. The level of experience, the fact of how close the matchup between these two teams a year ago was, and the somewhat uncommon meeting between a pair of Top 10 teams on the second weekend of the postseason, play into the bottom line: a win for either team will not come easily. 

“We know the environment is going to be good,” Thomas said. “We get a chance to rematch a really good team. It’s one of those games that you live for. This is what you play the game for.”

And for both coaches, these are the matchups you dream of. The goal of a victory goes without saying, but more than the talk of the rematch, or the renewing of what was once a rivalry nearly two decades ago, respect is the word that seems to come to the forefront in a conversation with both Harmon and Urban. Harmon is in his first season as head coach, having played a significant role in the building of UMHB’s program as its longtime defensive coordinator. And Urban is nearing the mountaintop, after a years-long journey of recruiting the “right” kids, and slowly building on each of the previous eight seasons. Each may be in a different place in his head coaching career but one similarity is shared: they continue to find ways to win.

“My assumption is that [Harmon] has taken a lot of pride, and rightfully so, in the building of that program to its pinnacle, and he knows what it takes at Mary Hardin-Baylor within their institutional construct to build a championship-level team,” Urban said. “For me at Trinity, I just had it in a different order. As a player, I had the chance to learn from the seniors and play under a Hall of Fame-level coach, and then be charged with the opportunity to get it back to those days that Coach Mohr built it up to. We have a couple of different experiences, but it’s been the same standards for both of us.”