Imperial, CA — IMPERIAL, Calif. — In the first half of Friday night’s game at Imperial, the Cibola defense played lights out with its back against the wall. Four times in the first two quarters, the Tigers had a drive that reached the red zone end in zero points. In the second half, though, Cibola’s defense finally broke. advertisement Imperial rallied from a 12-0 halftime deficit and used 22 unanswered points to emerge with a 29-18 victory in both teams’ season opener. “We got tired the second half,” Cibola coach Lucky Arvizo said. Imperial’s Santiago De La Torre, a run-minded quarterback, and Nathan Hart, a bruising running back, took advantage of the Raiders’ fatigue, doing most of the damage for an Imperial rushing attack that finished the game with 252 yards on 56 carries. Hart rushed for three touchdowns, all in the fourth quarter to turn an 18-7 Cibola lead into the final 29-18 deficit. Before Hart took over in the fourth quarter, it was De La Torre — who torched the Raiders’ secondary in last year’s meeting, when he played receiver — often turning negative plays into positive gains. “They’re tough runners, they’re good athletes,” Arvizo said. “(De La Torre) is 6-foot-3, about 180-190 pounds, and (Hart) is quick, a good-sized kid — they’re both difficult to bring down. They’re good runners and they did a good job running downhill.” In the first half, the story was Cibola’s defense and receivers. The Raiders forced three turnovers on down relatively deep in their own territory, and also held Imperial out of the end zone on the half’s final drive, which ended in a missed 28-yard field goal. Cibola went into the locker room with a 12-0 lead thanks to first-half touchdown passes by senior quarterback Ethan Arvizo, who found senior receiver Jesse Chavez behind the defense for a 40-yard score on the game’s first drive and later hit senior receiver Gabriel Ramirez in the back of the end zone on a third-and-goal midway through the second quarter. The Ramirez touchdown came on a drive that featured a 44-yard completion to Chavez and a 23-yard completion, down to the 1-yard line, to senior Cristian Bonilla. Chavez finished with 121 yards on five receptions, while Bonilla caught three balls for 55 yards and Ramirez caught six for 34. Cibola junior running back Zeke Rios, however, was unable to find much running room against Imperial’s front seven — with the exception of a 45-yard burst down the right sideline for a touchdown that made it 18-7 with 11:16 to go in the game. Take away that run, and Rios’ other eight rushing attempts went for just 17 yards total. “We became a one-facet team with just throwing the ball because we didn’t have much success running the ball aside from that one play, and that was an outside play — we couldn’t really run the ball inside on them,” Arvizo said. “So that’s an area we need to work on.” Rios’ touchdown run came on a drive that featured a fourth-and-one conversion followed by a 23-yard, third-and-long completion to Chavez. “They were having some success running the ball so we figured, ‘Hey, you know what, if we can keep possession and rest the defense a little bit, then I think that would work to our advantage,’” Arvizo said of the decision to go for it on fourth down on that drive. Turned out the rest that conversion provided wasn’t enough. Because on Imperial’s next drive, the Tigers — after a long kickoff return set them up in good field position — quickly went 37 yards in five rushing plays to pull back within a score. Immediately after that, Ethan Arvizo threw an interception on the first play of the Raiders’ drive, and then Imperial went 24 yards in five plays to take the lead after Hart punched in a fourth-and-goal-from-the-1 run with 7:37 left. A quick Cibola three-and-out, followed by another Imperial score, followed by an Arvizo lost fumble effectively sealed the deal. Arvizo finished 15 for 33 with 215 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions. “We’ve just got to see what we did incorrectly and get back to work on Monday and try to fix it,” Lucky Arvizo said.