Justin-Siena executives down the stretch, gets big games from trio of players to beat Napa in thriller
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Don Lex (LuckyDuckImages.com)
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In league play, there is no hiding and weaknesses will be found. The reason for this is everyone knows each other, even if there have been lots of new coaches added.
In Friday’s Vine Valley Athletic League opener, Justin-Siena outdueled Napa High for a 32-28 victory at Dodd Stadium.
When the game was on the line, the Braves defense made a key stop to secure the victory in the back-and-forth contest.
“I give them a lot of credit. They’re doing a really good job over there,” Justin-Siena head coach Tyler Streblow said of the battle. “ That’s a really good team from where they came from, you know, last year. That’s a tough win. You know, I think we’ve been a lot of close games the last couple (of) weeks, I’d like to not do that. But I think we’re kind of getting used to it. We did a great job executing down there. Our defense did a great job finishing that off.”
However, it also helped to have a quarterback leading them that has the offense at his fingertips and sees the field extremely well. After all, Drew Sangiacomo completed 17 of 21 passes for 252 yards, three touchdowns, and an interception.
“I trust him,” Streblow explained. “You know, there’s, there’s a lot of times, especially on third downs, where he’s going through his progression. He sees the open man and he just gets the ball out quick. So he’s just doing an amazing job. His arm talent’s always been there. But now he’s really going through his progressions. He’s reading the defenses. He’s getting the ball out quick. I think that was the biggest thing tonight. He got the ball out quick, precise, and then he took the shots downfield and he just did an amazing job.”
In two of those three scoring passes, he found Parker Schuman. The first of the two was the Braves’ first score of the game on a 16-yard connection. The second came at the 10:01 mark of the third quarter, which gave Justin-Siena their first lead of the contest at 19-14 after the two again connected on a touchdown, this time from 26 yards out.
“Parker’s a dog,” Sangiacomo said of Schuman. “He plays offense and defense. He’s just reliable. I know I can go to him at any point, and I feel that with all my receivers.”
The other touchdown pass came with 1:51 left in the third when Sangiacomo found Jason Gray for a 31-yard score.
It also helped that Justin-Siena (3-1, 1-0 VVAL) was able to keep the pass rush away from Sangiacomo due to Dallas Logwood’s nice game where he carried the ball 23 times for 96 yards.
“He’s a game changer,” Streblow said of Logwood and the impact he can make in a game. “He was banged up the first couple of weeks. So he finally started getting healthy. That’s a big difference. Our offensive line did a really good job tonight, and we just kind of executed. And Dallas just refuses to get tackled. I don’t really know what else to say about the guy. He has so much heart and he refuses to go down.”
Logwood also found the end zone from a yard out to make it a 32-21 game with just 6:19 left to play. He also never is tackled on first contact, which makes it a bit of a challenge for defenses to corral him. He also scored from 6 yards out with 5:36 left in the half to cut the Napa lead to 14-12.
The major battle was to stop the run. Early on, this was a challenge for both teams. The Braves did this by loading up the box to stop Grizzlies running back Alexis Barrientos.
“They put more dudes in the box,” Napa High offensive coordinator Chris Yepson said as to how the run game went away in the second half. “They switch from their, even (front) 4-3 (defense) with a six-man box, and they switch to an odd front with two overhangs and they bring in some bullets, which then allowed us to try to open up and throw the ball.”
The Grizzles (4-1, 0-1 VVAL) got a huge performance from senior wide receiver Fisher MacDonald in the game as well. He was utilized as a rusher in the Deebo Samuel type of role in the game. One of the reasons he gets this role is his breakaway speed, which he showed on his long touchdown scores of 52 and 69 on passes from Diego Montanez.
“What he brings is just top-end speed that Napa High has not seen in quite some time,” Yepson pointed out. “Like you saw on that slant, he catches it the second he gets into full stride, you’re not going to catch them, it really doesn’t matter who is playing. The issue is just finding the time to get them the football. Sometimes you have to be creative, and handing the ball and throwing them short slants. So that way you can lull people to sleep and you can take the top off like we did a couple of times.”
In the rushing game, he carried the ball three times for 45 yards.
The game began with the first score coming when Montanez found Barrientos for a 39-yard touchdown after they took five minutes off the clock to begin the game. The play came on a 4th down as well. Montanez completed 7 of 19 passes for 189 yards in the contest. Meanwhile, Barrientos had the lone reception of 39 yards while carrying the ball 14 times for 106 yards.
The Grizzlies’ other score came when Yovanni Palma took a direct snap from the Geronimo set and plowed into the end zone with 9:39 left in the first half.
Both teams will continue league play next Friday night. Napa will host Casa Grande-Petaluma at 7 p.m. in their Hall of Fame game, and Justin-Siena will host Vintage in their Homecoming game.
In the other game in Napa on Friday, American Canyon beat Vintage 16-13. Casa Grande had the league bye week. The other VVAL contest saw Petaluma beat Sonoma Valley 56-26. The standings can be viewed here.
Justin-Siena honors three teams at halftime
At halftime of the varsity contest, Justin-Siena honored the 1973, 1983, and 2003 football teams.
The 1973 team was the first team to establish a winning culture for the Braves. The 1983 and 2003 teams also won section titles.
“It was really cool to see some of my old teammates and just the buzz,” Streblow said of honoring the teams at the break. “You know, I got a lot of messages either on Instagram or text messages. It’s just really cool to be able to do that. I’ve been talking about that for the last couple of years. So I’m really happy we got to do that, and it was just really exciting. I wish I got to see some of the guys a little bit more but we’ll do that in the offseason. So it was a great night.”