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We'll get to the Air Bear portion of the program in a moment.

But first - and perhaps more important - let's discuss La Cueva High's defense.

It was good enough Friday night to have coach Fred Romero raising the specter of La Cueva's past greatness - specifically, those suffocating defensive units that were the foundation of back-to-back Class 5A state football titles in 2003 and 2004.

"We've been able to get back and start playing some defense like we did in our state championship form," a happy Romero said a few minutes after his team crushed Alamogordo 34-13 at Milne Stadium.

Heir Bear, the 2007 edition, might just prove to be big trouble in the Class 5A playoffs.

La Cueva's helmet-popping defense limited the 6-5 Tigers to just 95 yards on the ground, while quarterback Harry Oms did a pretty fair Tom Brady imitation on the Alamogordo defense with touchdown passes of 67, 24 and 12 yards.

Net result: Clovis coach Eric Roanhaus, whose Wildcats play host to 8-3 La Cueva next week, found himself grimacing throughout the scouting trip - including the 3-hour ride home.

"You gotta earn what you get," Roanhaus said of sixth-seeded La Cueva. "They're not going to give you nothing."

Stout La Cueva defense is nothing new, but the performance against Alamogordo - the Bears were nearly impenetrable after spotting the Tigers a 7-0 lead - had a sense of mission, a sense of mean, that hadn't been seen in some time.

"There's a little bit of doubt, just because their offense, watching film on them . . . they were just able to move the ball," said La Cueva linebacker Justin Dugger. "But we were pretty satisfied with how the defense played."

Alamogordo, the No. 11 seed, finished with just 10 first downs and 176 yards of total offense - nowhere near good enough against a team that kept the pressure on with a surprisingly crisp passing attack that isolated quick wideout Isaiah Fuller against slower Tigers cornerbacks.

Oms finished 8-for-14, including two touchdown passes to Fuller and one to Taylor Velasquez. Add that to a 4-yard scoring run by Dugger and Brandon Haltom's 28-yard touchdown run, and it was enough to ease the sting of running back Gus Bowe's season-ending suspension.

"I'm just proud of them," Romero said of his club. "We've had a lot of adversity going through our football team the past couple of weeks, but we knew that there was more than one person on the team, and I think our kids really showed a lot of character tonight and fought through that adversity."