CYPRESS — As great as the Port Arthur Memorial Titans’ season had been all year, it ended with an equally humbling loss.

The Titans scored first, a 55-yard run by Kary Vincent Jr., only to watch Temple score 39 unanswered points at Cy-Fair FCU Stadium. Temple’s 39-7 victory set up a showdown next week between the Wildcats and the Manvel Mavericks, who dispatched Cedar Park 47-35 Saturday.

“We played a real good football team today and they came out on top,” Memorial coach Kenny Harrison said.

Harrison would not make any excuses, but there was a glaring hole in the Titans’ roster Saturday.

Elijah Hines, the District 22-5A rushing leader, missed the game with a shoulder injury. He suffered the injury last week against Fort Bend Elkins on a touchdown run. He stayed in that game and rushed 19 more times for 131 yards.

“We had kids step up and do some things,” Harrison said about the players who tried to replace Hines. “No excuses, we just got beat by a better football team today. Anytime we can have Elijah Hines, we would love to have him but we had guys fill in that did a tremendous job.”

Memorial (10-2) was held to 142 yards of offense, 90 rushing and 52 passing.

It was such a bad day on offense for the Titans that after Vincent’s 55-yard touchdown run, he carried the ball three more times in the game but ended with a net total of 55 yards.

The Titans had six first downs and punted the ball 10 times. Memorial punter Kenny Pham had 21 punts in the regular season.

Pham was also on the end of the bad luck for Memorial Saturday. He was injured when a Temple player ran into him during a punt. What should have been a Memorial first down eventually was nothing more than a 5-yard delay of game Titans’ penalty that negated the roughing the kicker call. Pham did not return to the game.

Temple (10-3) turned the 7-0 Memorial lead around in a hurry after a safety and on the ensuing free kick, Jemiyah Franklin ran the kick back 80 yards for a touchdown to give the Wildcats a 9-7 lead.

The Knights tacked on another score in the second to grab a 16-7 lead at the break.

Memorial’s wheels certainly came off in the third when Temple got another safety and 53 seconds later used the extra possession to score another touchdown.

D’Yonte Heckstall hauled in a 45-yard touchdown pass from Reid Hesse to widen the Temple lead to 25-7 with 6:59 left in the third.

Franklin later scored again in the third and Anthony Jefferson ran in a touchdown from 37 yards out in the fourth to cap the scoring.

The Titans could not take advantage of three interceptions thrown by Hesse. Xavier Hull, Javontae’ Hopkins and Kobe Nixon made the picks.

Hesse threw for 320 yards against the Memorial defense. He did it mainly by a lot of quick throws in order to avoid the Titans’ pass rush.

Zaccheus Johnson led the Wildcats with 143 yards receiving on six receptions. Heckstall added 64 yards on three catches and Terrance Johnson had 35 yards on three receptions.

Memorial only mustered up 16 yards of offense in the entire second half.

Adrian Williams had a team-high six receptions for 37 yards. Kobi Martin led the Titans in rushing with 39 yards on 16 carries.

Harrison also hinted senior receiver and recent Texas Southern commit De’Andre Angelle was nursing a minor injury Saturday, as was Keitha Jones.

Angelle was held without a catch and rushed the ball twice for 1 yard.

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Gabriel Pruett: 721-2436. Twitter: @PaNewsGabe