Season about to end for two North Coast heavyweights
Like or dislike the North Coast Section’s four-team Open Division football playoffs, the bottom line is this: Two of the Bay Area’s top teams in 2017 will see their season end this weekend, two weeks before section championships are decided around the region.
That’s the price for being selected by a threemember panel as one of the NCS’s top four teams.
Friday night, fourth seed Clayton Valley Charter will visit top seed De La Salle for the second year in a row in the Open’s round of four. De La Salle won last season 28-0.
Saturday, second seed Pittsburg will play host to third seed San Ramon Valley. Pittsburg lost to Freedom in the Open semifinals a year ago.
The winners this weekend will advance to the Open final in two weeks. Both finalists are projected to move on to the state playoffs.
“I know the Open final carries a lot with it,” San Ramon Valley coach Aaron Becker said. “You win the first game, you get all those opportunities that go along with being in the Open final. I don’t think there will be any shortage of excitement.”
Since the NCS added an Open last season, the internal and sometimes external conversation among heavyweight programs long used to losing to De La Salle is pretty obvious: Is it better to be part of the four-team Open or a favorite to win a section championship in Division I, a division that won’t send its champion to the state playoffs because that spot most likely will go to the Open runner-up?
Clayton Valley coach Tim Murphy thought his team was headed for the Division I bracket until Liberty beat Freedom on the final weekend of the regular season.
That outcome vaulted Clayton Valley into the dreaded fourth seed in the Open — the one opposite De La Salle — and sent Freedom to the No. 2 seed in Division I, just behind top seed Liberty.
Rather than view the matchup against De La Salle as a one-and-done, Murphy acknowledged that it’s an honor for his young team to be back in the Open.
“Absolutely, especially with us having the numbers of a D-II school,” he said. “Could you imagine us in the D-II bracket? I think the fact that we have done well in the past that the NCS moved us up a division and, now with this Open Division, we were even able to supersede Division I and go to the Open, it absolutely is an honor.
“I think our kids take pride in it. I am not upset at all. I told my wife the whole time we were going to get four. It’s going to be good. Everyone is going to be fine. We’re going to accept the challenge, and we’ll get after it. I don’t think the kids are upset or defeated or anything like that.”
This will be the fourth meeting between De La Salle and its Concord neighbor since 2004. De La Salle is 3-0-1 in those games.
“When us and De La Salle play, there is almost no penalties,” Murphy said. “When we scrimmaged them, there was no talking trash. There were no penalties. Last year, there were almost no penalties. It was a good, hard clean game. I love those kind of games, where the players on the field dictate the outcome, not the officials.”
San Ramon Valley has had two weeks to regroup since closing the regular season with a 49-14 loss at De La Salle. The Wolves are 1-3 against Pittsburg since 2008, their lone victory coming in 2014, 2720. Pittsburg won the most recent meeting, 42-28 in 2015.
Becker said he is proud that his team reached the Open.
“You are one of the top four teams in the section regardless of school enrollment,” he said. “I think you have to look at that as a feather in your cap.”
Of course, the one downside: The season ends for two of the four powerhouses this weekend.