Championship weekend
De La Salle-Pittsburg, Serra-St. Francis, Liberty-Freedom headline action
By any measure, Pittsburg is the second-best team in the Bay Area this season. The Pirates beat Serra on the road, went undefeated in the area’s toughest league and defeated a very good San Ramon Valley team in the first round of the playoffs.
But they will be a decisive underdog Saturday night when they play De La Salle for the North Coast Section Open Division championship at Dublin High.
Since it lost to Pittsburg in a section final in 1991, De La Salle has not been beaten by a California team north of Fresno, an unbeaten streak that reached 289 games when the Spartans rolled over Clayton Valley Charter 45-7 in a playoff opener two weeks ago.
Pittsburg advanced with a 16-7 win over SRV, which was coming off a 49-14 loss at DLS to close the regular season, and is confident entering the final.
“I like our chances,” Pittsburg coach Victor Galli told the this newspaper’s Mike Lefkow this week. “I don’t think they can’t be beat. Otherwise, why would they play this game?”
Pittsburg opened the season with a 63-21 loss at Southern California power Centennial-Corona.
Since then, the only things to slow down the Pirates are heat and fire. Their game against James Logan was canceled because of a heat wave and their game against Deer Valley was canceled because of concerns over unhealthy air from the North Bay wildfires.
DLS has won 25 consecutive section championships since its 35-27 loss to Pittsburg in 1991, and only one of the championship games has been decided by fewer than 20 points, a 14-0 win over San Leandro in 2005.
This will be the 14th playoff game between Pittsburg and De La Salle since 1991. DLS has won the previous 13 by an average of 35.2 points, including a 70-14 rout in a semifinal game in 2015.
No matter the result Saturday, both teams are expected to advance to the state playoffs.
CCS Open II
St. Francis coach Greg Calcagno knows exactly what to avoid when his team plays rival Serra for a section championship Saturday night.
“Let’s not get a 21-point deficit,” he said.
When these heavyweights met three weeks ago in Mountain View, Serra needed fewer than 13 minutes to score three touchdowns but then watched St. Francis storm back to tie the score in the fourth quarter.
Serra eventually emerged with a 31-21 victory that clinched the Padres’ first outright West Catholic Athletic League championship in 48 years and put the wheels in motion for an anticipated rematch.
Round 2 will be played at Independence High as Serra will try to defend the Central Coast Section Open Division II championship it won last season on its way to reaching a state title game.
Serra already has secured its spot in a Northern California regional game next week because of the 30 section power points it accumulated during the regular season. Only Milpitas (31.5) and Salinas (30.5) have more among the six finalists in the section’s three Open divisions.
St. Francis, with 27 points, needs a win or a Half Moon Bay win Saturday night over Terra Nova to play beyond this weekend.
The CCS sends its three champions and two of the three runners-up from its Open divisions to the regionals.
“Obviously we’d still like to go either way,” Calcagno said. “But the rules are in place, and somebody smarter than me has figured that out. Our job is to go win a CCS championship. If we can do that, that’s a pretty damn good season for us.”
Serra has faced nothing but WCAL teams since its 35-28 loss to Pittsburg in early September, winning all nine games by an average of 33.2 points, an astounding number given the league’s powerful reputation.
NCS D-I
No coach likes rematches, especially in the playoffs. But Liberty is getting used to it — and handling it well.
The Lions (10-2) thus far have played Heritage and San Leandro, teams they beat by a combined 10 points during the regular season. In the playoffs, the scores have been 35-15 (Heritage) and 34-12 (San Leandro).
“We’re a better football team now than we were then, except for that one hiccup against Pittsburg,” Liberty coach Ryan Partridge told Lefkow.
The one hiccup was a 35-0 defeat to the Pirates.
Freedom’s playoff victories have come against Amador Valley and Antioch, teams it did not see during the regular season. Freedom and Antioch had their league game canceled because of the wildfires.
CCS Open I
One week after surviving its first scare of the season, Milpitas will play Salinas on Friday night at Independence for the Open Division I crown.
This will be Milpitas’ third consecutive trip to the Open I final. The Trojans lost in the title game to Menlo-Atherton last year and Bellarmine College Prep in 2015.
This time around, it has been a redemption tour.
To reach the final Friday, Milpitas (12-0) beat Bellarmine 35-7 in the first round and Menlo-Atherton 33-20 in the semifinals.
If there is more redemption Friday, it will be on the other sideline. Salinas lost at home to Milpitas 27-0 in mid-September but has since gone on to win the Monterey Bay Gabilan Division championship and beat Palo Alto 14-7 and Los Gatos 43-23 in the first two rounds of the playoffs.
“It’s going to be exciting again, another defensive battle,” Milpitas star Tariq Bracy said. “We’ll see what happens.”
CCS Open III
Half Moon Bay and Terra Nova have taken different paths to the CCS Open Division III championship game Saturday night at Sequoia High.
For Half Moon Bay, it has been a storybook season. Led by a senior class that has played together since elementary school, the Cougars (12-0) won the Peninsula Athletic League’s top division, the Bay, this fall despite a roster numbering in the mid-20s.
Rival Terra Nova (7-5) seemingly has been playing from behind all season, starting when it had to forfeit its season opener against Gunderson for getting into an altercation at a scrimmage against Moreau Catholic, which did not have to forfeit because its section’s ejection policy does not include scrimmages.
Terra Nova won four in a row after the forfeit, including a 28-17 victory over CCS Open Division I finalist Salinas, but hit a rough stretch once Bay Division play started. The low point came when the injury-plagued Tigers traveled down the coast for the annual Skull game against Half Moon Bay on Nov. 3 and returned home to Pacifica with a 45-7 loss.
“The kids were embarrassed,” Terra Nova coach Tim Adams said. “There is no doubt that we as a coaching staff and we as a team were completely embarrassed by the product that we put on the field in our first round with Half Moon Bay.”
Other games
It has taken 14 games and three rounds of mostly mismatches to get to this point in the NCS Division II playoffs. When Campolindo and Granada play Friday night at Dublin High to determine the champion, it will match a pair of 9-4 teams that from the outset deserved to be in the postseason but have barely worked up a sweat en route to the championship game. Campo, the top seed, has won its three games by an average of 30 points. No.
2 seed Granada has outscored its opponents by 32 points per contest . ... Led by junior running back Kyle Anderson, who is 48 rushing yards shy of 2,000 for the season, Leland will play Christopher on Saturday night for the CCS Division IV title at Westmont High. As with Leland, which went 2-8 in 2016 and is 11-1 now, Christopher (10-2) has made a stunning turnaround. The Cougars were 1-9 last season. Ben Sanford has thrown for 2,223 yards and 26 touchdowns and Tyler Davis has rushed for 1,027 yards to lead Christopher . ... The town of Gilroy could have its first two CCS football championships by the end of the weekend. Christopher’s crosstown rival, Gilroy, will bring an undefeated record into the CCS Division V final Menlo on Friday night at Westmont High. Joseph Barnes has rushed for 1,552 yards and 21 touchdowns to lead Gilroy (12-0). Second seed Menlo rallied in the closing minutes to defeat Scotts Valley 26-21 in the semifinals.