American Canyon uses powerful ground attack, strong effort from Lopez to beat Justin-Siena and stay unbeaten
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (Shamboozled.com)
Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
When your run game goes and goes and goes, the offense is going to put up some points and fast.
In Friday night’s Redwood Empire Conference-Valley matchup, this is what American Canyon did as they put up some big numbers on offense to beat Justin-Siena, 49-14, at Dodd Stadium.
In the game, the Wolves (6-0, 2-0 RECV) churned out a whopping 441 yards on the ground.
“We’re just being effective with the ground game and when you can run the football in football, you’re going to always be successful,” American Canyon head coach Trevor Hudson said of the importance of pounding the rock. “But I got to give a lot of credit to Justin Siena. You know, they don’t have many but them Braves, they fought, they played really good football.”
However, it also helped that junior running back Andre Lopez carried 13 times in the contest for a whopping 197 yards. He also had four trips to the end zone. The first of those came in the snap of a finger when he rumbled in from 22 yards out with 11:38 to go in the first quarter. The scoring play was set up by a 66-yard kick return by Kamani Santos, which put them knocking on the red zone.
From there, the rest of the first half was all Lopez. He continued to be a punisher on the ground as he had his second touchdown of the game this time from 30 yards out with 5:33 still left in the first quarter.
“Man, they just make it so easy for me,” Lopez said of the importance of his linemen giving him big areas to run all over the field. All I got to do is read their backs and run off, run off of them and just just hit that hole.”
In the second quarter, the body blows continued as he once again rumbled into the end zone with 10:28 left in the first half from just 3 yards out. He added his final score of the game, which happened to be his longest play from scrimmage on a long 65-yard rumble to the end zone with 5 minutes left in the first half.
“You want to the scary part. I know it’s almost Halloween. Here comes the scary story. He’s only a junior,” Hudson pointed out of his star running back. “This young man is running the ball at an amazing clip. We just want to keep him safe and keep him healthy.”
With the four trips to the end zone, Lopez has a whopping 15 touchdowns in just six games. He is also very close to surpassing 1,000 yards on the season following the effort as he now has 957 yards on the ground to this point in the season.
“I say what’s going on is, I feel like the connection with the offense as a whole, between the coaches, between the O line, receivers there, it’s like all in one flow,” Lopez said of why he’s able to put up these big numbers so early into the season. “Cohesive and we’re all able to work together.”
In the second half of the game, was when Mason Harris got going. The senior quarterback scored his first rushing touchdown in the game on a 10-yard rush with 4:07 remaining in the third quarter.
Then, he had his biggest running play of the game when he ripped off a long 55-yard house call with 6:12 left to play.
“What Mason gives us is the versatility,” Hudson explained. “It makes it hard to defend when you have who can run, who can throw, who can do all these different things. It makes life difficult for the defense. So we’re glad he’s on our side.”
Harris finished the game with a pair of touchdowns on 8 carries for 124 yards.
Also finding the end zone in the game was Amier Barfield who capped off the scoring on a 7-yard run with 27.1 remaining to play.
Meanwhile, Justin-Siena (2-4, 0-3 RECV) was able to hang around in the first half. After the first score, the passing offense opened up when Drew Sangiacomo found Luke Ficeli for a 22-yard score with 9:37 left to play in the first quarter.
In the game, Ficeli was an integral part of the passing game as he had 4 catches for 71 yards to lead the receivers. He’s also had his role expanded this season to be an important part of the offense on a weekly basis.
“He’s really developed into a receiver,” Justin-Siena head coach Tyler Strebow said of Ficeli’s growth and importance. “I mean, last year he was primarily a tight end. He caught some balls, but he’s just a playmaker. So we had to kind of put him in space a little bit more this year and he’s done a really good job.”
The only other score for the Braves came when Dallas Logwood had a long 91-yard kick return that made it 28-14 after Sangiacomo found Tommy Malloy on the two-point try.
“We just started that this week,” Streblow pointed out of how they put Logwood back to return kicks. “We knew they were going to do a lot of squib kicks alongside kicks, so we moved a lot of guys up, and then the ball kind of landed back there, so we decided to put Tommy and Dallas back there.”
Both teams will continue Redwood Empire Conference-Valley play next week in Petaluma at 7 pm. American Canyon will visit Petaluma on one side of town and on the other Justin-Siena will Casa Grande.
In other Redwood Empire Conference-Valley games on Friday, Petaluma beat Napa 56-35.
