Matt Padilla was wide open.

Shadow Mountain junior quarterback Nainoa Shin saw Padilla streaking down the middle of the field and fired the football from midfield. With seven seconds on the clock and an eight-point deficit facing the Matadors, this was going to be the play that kept Shin and his team alive.

Shin’s rocket pass fell inches from Padilla, sputtered into the red turf in the end zone. With it, the Matadors hopes of a miracle skidded to a halt.

“I knew Matt was going to be open in th game,” Shin said. “I have all my faith in my receivers to make the best plays possible. Maybe I could’ve put a little less on it or he could’ve ran faster, but I had faith in him.”

Caught up in a sea of miscues, unfortunate calls and costly penalties, Shadow Mountain was left with frustration — and a lot to learn from — following a difficult 27-19 road loss to rival Paradise Valley.

“We’ve got to be more disciplined,” head coach Ron Fagan said. “We had a lot of penalties that hurt us.”

Fagan could have easily pointed to a handful of plays that cost his team a chance at defeating the Trojans (1-3) for the first time in nearly two decades.

A Jalen Williams pick-six called back for a unnecessary roughness, a pair of missed extra points and a couple of overthrows through the end zone swirled through his head following the loss.

“When you get those big momentum plays and then they take them back, you still have some momentum but you don’t have the momentum to roll where we should’ve been,” he said. “This was tough.”

One play in particular, however, stuck out to Fagan.

Following a touchdown run by Shin that cut Paradise Valley’s lead to 20-19, the Matadors (1-2) ran an onside kick play that they practiced all week.

Shin chipped the ball over the first line of the Trojans return team, Williams flew down the sidelines, tipped the ball to keep it in bounds where it was soon recovered by the Matadors.

With all the momentum in his team’s favor and an upcoming possession in opposing territory midway through the fourth quarter, it appeared Shadow Mountain had overcome its three quarters of sloppy football to somehow have a shot at the victory.

And then the flags were thrown — seemingly from every direction — first for offsides and then for unsportsmanlike conduct, thanks to the reactions of Fagan and other Shadow Mountain coaches to a controversial overturn of the onside kick.  

“You have a play where the referees make a horrible call on a turnover like that, and only one of them supposedly saw it,” he said. “I know that we didn’t do it, because we practiced that little chop-kick. It’s just ridiculous. We had the momentum, we worked the whole play … and then you have something like that where they give the ball back to them … it hurts.”

It was that kind of game for the Matadors; for everything that went right, something was there to negate it in the near future.

Despite such a loss in an emotional game, Shin — who completed 16 of his 32 passing attempts for 154 yards, while running for 80 more — found the silver lining.

“Even though we took the loss …  me and my brothers fought, we were down the whole game,” he said. “We were expected to go 0-10 this season and we’ve already proven everybody wrong.”

On the other sideline, celebration ensued for Paradise Valley following yet another defeat of Shadow Mountain, the Trojans first of the season. 

“We have a thing here at P.V., we never lose to Shadow Mountain,” senior tight end Bric Hudnutt said. “We came out here, we worked our butts off, and we came out with the ‘W,’ it’s a beautiful thing.”

Following the onside kick fiasco, Hudnutt said he had one thing on his mind: the end zone. A touchdown in the waning minutes would — and eventually did — all but seal the deal, pushing the Trojans’ lead to eight.

The Trojans capped their clock-salting, methodic drive on a touchdown with 1:54 to go by junior running back Tyler Lutz, who had 111 yards on 20 carries.

“The whole way, I was just thinking, ‘We’ve got to score this touchdown,’” Hudnutt said. “I see the clock winding down and I’m just thinking to myself that if we can get this touchdown, this game is ours.”

While Paradise Valley’s camp was nothing but smiles as the likelihood of a Shadow Mountain comeback faded, those on the other sideline couldn't help but feel deflated.

But the Matadors will be ready when faced with the chance to break their curse against the Trojans in a year’s time.

Nainoa Shin made that promise all too clear.

“We stayed in and fought,” he said. “We’ll be back, we’ve got a team full of juniors, not many seniors.

“We’ll be back for them.”