Casa Grande’s second quarter scoring proves to be enough to beat Justin-Siena in regular-season finale
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (Shamboozled.com)
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
When you’re a team with not as many bodies against a bigger team, the hope is to contain the best players.
For the most part, the Braves did that. The one exception was Ryder Jacobson who had another monster game by rushing 22 times for 158 yards and two touchdowns to lead casa Grande past Justin-Siena, 24-14, on Senior Night.
“It’s really tough when we face teams that are so big upfront and they can get in for wide sets and we can’t commit six or seven to the box man,” Justin-Siena head coach TylerStreblow said of stopping Jacobson. “So we got to try to pick our poison and we’re going to try to kind of play bend but don’t break. That’s our philosophy. That’s our scheme, how we do it. We had one miscommunication we blitzed to the wrong gap, and that was on the touchdown. Other than that, I thought we did a really good job containing them, yes, he got his yards.”
Jacobson accounted for two of the Gauchos’ three scores in the game. His first was a 42-yard rush with 7:03 left in the first half. Then, with 38.9 left until the half, he scampered in from two yards away. Both times, quarterback Wyatt Abramson found Lucas Miles for the successful two-point try to give Casa Grande a 16-7 halftime lead.
The first score of the game came when Roman Williams busted through a wide-open hole for a 20-yard score with 7:28 left in the second quarter that gave the Braves a 7-0 lead. Williams rushed the ball 12 times for 44 yards in the game.
“We started feeding him and he just kept going,” Streblow said of Williams, who was chosen to start since it was senior night. “So he did a really amazing job. His vision is incredible. He just hits the holes really, really hard. Even when it was just a little hole or there was nothing there, he put his head down. So I’m just really proud of him.”
On the defensive side of the ball, the Braves (5-5 overall, 2-4 Vine Valley Athletic League gave yet another solid effort. They not only kept the team in the game but they also sacked Abramson five times and forced a pair of turnovers. The issue came on offense where the Braves failed to take advantage of the change of possessions, which could’ve made the game even more interesting.
“We couldn’t finish,” Streblow explained. “It was kind of some different things. We were either aligned wrong or we missed a pass here or there or we dropped a pass or we missed a block or we missed a blitz pick-up assignment. It was just a bunch of things, and it killed us because we were down inside the 30 a lot and just couldn’t finish.”
Casa Grande’s final score of the game came when Abramson found Spencer Almond on a 16-yard connection. The duo connected again for the two-point conversion to make it 24-7.
In the game, the Gauchos (6-4, 4-2 VVAL) converted all three two-point attempts. Had Justin-Siena found a way to minimize those, it could’ve been a much closer contest.
“We don’t have a lot of guys who have played football before they get to high school and that one’s on the coaches just making sure we understand the situation there and really having them understand the difference between a one and a two-score and a three-score game,” Streblow said of the three two-point conversions that his squad allowed. “So I think that was on the coaches, we didn’t do a good enough job getting them prepared for that.”
The final score of the game came with just 5:43 remaining in the game when Drew Sangiacomo found Josiyah Maddalone for a 22-yard scoring connection. Sangiacomo completed 11 of 27 passes in the contest for 119 yards. Maddalone ended the night with four receptions and 46 yards.
“We were taking this stuff underneath, we were running the ball,” Streblow said of the final scoring drive his team put together. “Drew did a great job all night taking the quick out. We were getting them 5,5, and 5, and they finally jumped up on it, and Drew read it perfectly, which is awesome just to see a sophomore make that read and go to the next progression and hit JoJo on the corner route like that was that was really impressive.”
Both teams will now wait till Sunday afternoon to find out where they stand in the CIF North Coast Section playoffs, which begin next week.
In other VVAL action Friday night, American Canyon beat Petaluma 35-23 and Sonoma Valley beat Napa 28-21. This means Vintage wins the VVAL title for the fourth time in the last five years.
