High school football state playoff wrapup
Spartans fall behind in first quarter, lose badly again in Open title game
SACRAMENTO >> The De La Salle blueprint for victory did not call for this. It did not call for Mater Dei to cruise for an early touchdown, or a fumble that led to another touchdown, or a botched snap on a punt that led to one more touchdown.
It did not call for a 21-point deficit before the first quarter ended.
De La Salle faced long odds Saturday night, needing to play a virtually flawless game to have a chance against the Southern California juggernaut from Santa Ana.
Hardly flawless, De La Salle was beaten soundly in the Open Division championship game for the second year in a row, this time 52-21 against national No. 1 Mater Dei, a talent-rich team that completed an all-time great season.
Mater Dei quarterback JT Daniels, a USC-bound junior, completed 20 of 30 passes for 233 yards and three touchdowns and also ran for two touchdowns before departing to cheers at Sacramento State’s Hornet Stadium midway through the fourth quarter.
Amon-Ra St. Brown caught eight of Daniels’ passes for 137 yards and two touchdowns.
“We were far from perfect,” De La Salle coach Justin Alumbaugh said. “We didn’t have to play perfect. We just had to play a good game. We had opportunities to close the gap and make it a game. Our kids played hard. But fumbles all over the place, missed snaps and this and that. C’mon, those guys are good enough. You don’t need to give them any help.”
One year after St. John Bosco defeated De La Salle 56-33 for the Open crown, the Spartans hoped to flip the script, hoped that a schedule that included Bishop Gorman-Las Vegas and St. John’sWashington, D.C. would get them ready for whichever powerhouse came out of the South.
Alumbaugh acknowledged during the week that the margin for error against Mater Dei was razor thin. But he believed the blueprint that had brought seven state championships to the De La Salle campus over the past dozen years — and many more championships in the pre-state playoff era — would keep his team in this game, if executed properly.
The five turnovers De La Salle (11-2) committed obviously were not part of the plan, especially Zion Alefosio’s 86-yard interception return that made the score 28-7 with four minutes left in the second quarter.
De La Salle had just scored and recovered the ball on a pooch kickoff, giving itself an opportunity to cut the early 21-point deficit down to 21-10 or 21-14.
But Alefosio’s play ended that hope.
“The pick-six, that was pretty back-breaking,” Alumbaugh said.
De La Salle wanted to get to the fourth quarter with a manageable score, a score that would test Mater Dei’s nerve, but it was anything but manageable when the final 12 minutes arrived.
Daniels’ 40-yard run padded Mater Dei’s lead to 4521 through three quarters, and his 22-yard strike to St. Brown early in the fourth quarter stretched the cushion to 52-21.
Fifty-six was a motivating number at De La Salle all last offseason after the 56 points it yielded against Bosco last December. But this Mater Dei team was better than Bosco, a team for the ages that rolled past every team that crossed its path and never trailed all year.
Longtime Mater Dei coach Bruce Rollinson, who was 0-4 against De La Salle, was concerned before the game that his players were too worried about the windy and cool conditions and not focused on football. He went to his quarterback and asked him to rally the troops.
“Don’t worry about it,” Daniels told the coach. “When that thing goes off, we want this badly.”
Mater Dei (15-0) made it look easy on its first series. Too easy. It needed only six plays to go 80 yards, a drive capped by a 37-yard pass from Daniels to St. Brown.
De La Salle fumbled near midfield on its opening possession, a miscue that set up Mater Dei’s second touchdown. Mater Dei had to work a little harder on this series, but it was still precision-like when pushed.
On fourth-and-11 from the 28, Daniels connected with St. Brown for 25 yards to the 3. The quarterback scored on a sneak two plays later, widening the lead to 14-0.
“We had unfinished business from last year,” said Daniels, whose team did not reach this stage in 2016. “This year was about finishing business.”
The plot worsened for De La Salle when a misplay on a punt gave Mater Dei the ball at the DLS 26. The Monarchs converted another fourth down on that series, a 6-yard pass from Daniels to St. Brown, and then pushed the advantage to 21-0 on Glenn Harper’s 15-yard run around left end.
Kairee Robinson’s 3-yard run cut the deficit to 21-7 midway through the second quarter. The pooch kick and recovery put De La Salle in position to get back into the game.
But on third down, Erich Storti’s pass was intercepted by Alefosio, who ran for the touchdown that all but put the game away before halftime.
“We just shot ourselves in the foot,” linebacker/running back Henry To’oto’o said. “They did what they did, but we turned the ball over too many times.”
If there was a bright spot for De La Salle, Robinson took the honors. In his final high school game and playing on a broken foot, he rushed for 101 yards and two touchdowns.
But at the state’s highest level, this night and this season was about Mater Dei.
“They’re a great team,” Alumbaugh said. “They deserve to be the champions.”