Plagued by too many miscues and dominated by St. Joseph’s massive defensive line, Bishop Diego’s football team turned in a lackluster performance in its home opener Friday night at SBCC in a 31-13 loss to the visiting Knights.
One week after an encouraging narrow loss on the road to Arroyo Grande, the Cardinals (0-2) came out “tentative and flat” according to head coach Tom Crawford. “We acted like we were overmatched,” Crawford said. “We were tentative with what we we doing. It was obvious.”
Led by Ryan Anglin’s two touchdown runs, the Knights amassed 263 yards on the ground and stymied
Bishop’s offense with the defensive front line of John Sua, Jimmy Aldridge, Dale Gillaspy and Stephen Buhring. Led by Sua’s solid 278-pound frame, that foursome averages 245 pounds.
Add in two fumbles, two interceptions and one bad snap in punt formation, and you have a recipe for a game that Crawford described as “ugly.”
“I felt like we stepped back from last week,” said Crawford. “I’m always leery of Week 2. In the first week it’s easier to get the kids to come out motivated and try to get off to a good start. But tonight we looked tentative and flat.”
Conversely, Knights head coach Mike Hartman had enough reasons to be pleased with his team’s season opener before hosting a much bigger school in Paso Robles next week.
“We got a good push from our interior linemen and forced their quarterback (Anthony Martinez) to scramble a lot,” said Hartman. “And our secondary really played well and made them change their passing game. It was an all-around good performance.”
Hartman acknowledged that his defensive front line of Sua, Aldridge, Gillaspy and Buhring is his team’s “strength of what we do. It’s what we expected.
“But (having a big front line) is not typical for us.”
The Cardinals looked like they were in for a long night after Knights quarterback Gavin Kelly directed an 81-yard, nine-play scoring drive culminated by K.J, Cusack’s 23-yard sweep to the right into the end zone at the 4:00 mark of the first quarter. The PAT kick made it 7-0. On the subsequent kickoff Anglin recovered a Bishop fumble caused by a thundering hit after the catch of the short high kick.
The Knights resumed possession at the Bishop 35 and reached the end zone seven plays later on Anglin’s 8-yard run for a 13-0 lead with less than a minute to play in the opening quarter. Bishop’s next generous move was a bad snap over the punter’s head in its very next short-lived possession. Cardinal punter Emilio Ruggiero was tackled at the Bishop 4, from where Anglins ran in his second TD for a 19-0 advantage. That’s where the score stood at halftime.
The first-half stats reflected Bishop’s plight: 46 totals yards, including a minus-2 on the ground. St. Joseph had 156 totals yards at that point, 132 rushing. Crawford was hoping his team was still within range at that point, but the Cardinals were turned away on their first possession of the second half. Then all hopes were dashed when Kelly dashed for a 62-yard TD run on a beautifully executed quarterback option off a fake. That made it 25-0 with 10:25 remaining in the third quarter.
“It was a combination of good line blocking and a great fake by our fullback (Sua),” Kelly said of his TD run.
Sua then got in the scoring act himself on defense when he stripped the ball from Cardinal running back Alex Robitaille (his only carry of the game) at the Bishop 20 and rumbled in from there for a 31-0 lead with 6:52 to go in the third quarter.
“That was the longest third quarter I’ve seen for a while,” said Crawford. “I thought it was never going to end.”
From that point on Hartman played his subs. The Cardinals got two late scores in the final quarter — a 17-yard TD run by reserve sophomore running back Bruce Garcia, and a 9-yard scoring run by back-up quarterback Brandon Gonzalez.
“We could’ve played a lot better,” said Martinez, who completed 11-of-21 passes for 72 yards and two picks that Crawford deemed “unfair” to Martinez.
“This wasn’t our potential.”
Martinez’s favorite target was Shane McCarthy, who caught six passes for 35 yards. McCarthy was also a standout on defense. Cardinal running back R.J. Escamilla didn’t break out of negative yardage until well into the third quarter but finished with 58 yards on 16 carries.
(Photo of Bishop Diego QB Anthony Martinez courtesy of Robert Leiter)
ST. JOSEPH 31, BISHOP DIEGO 13
St Joseph………..13 6 12 0 — 31
Bishop Diego……0 0 0 13 — 13
First Quarter
SJ- Cusack 23 run (Gallegos kick), 4:00.
SJ- Anglin 8 run (kick no good), 0:57.
Second Quarter
SJ- Anglin 4 run (run no good), 10:26.
Third Quarter
SJ- Kelly 62 run (kick no good), 10:05.
SJ- Sua, 20 return on fumble recovery (kick no good), 6:52.
Fourth Quarter
BD- B.Garcia 19 run (Verhasselt kick), 7:03.
Bd- B. Gonzalez 9 run (kick no good), 1:42.
TEAM STATS SJ BD
First Downs…………………….11 15
Rushes-Yards………30-263 35-137
Passing Yards………………….36 72
Total Yards………………….299 209
Passes……………..5-10-0 11-22-2
Punts-Avg……………3-36.0 4-39.0
Fumbles-Lost……………..1-1 2-2
Penalities-Yards………..4-35 3-20
INDIVIDUAL STATS
RUSHING: SJ- Kelly 4-90, Anglin 9-61, Ibarra 4-49, Cusak 7-46, Puerling 4-8,
Sua 1-5, Perkins 1-4. BD- Escamilla 16-58, P.Garcia 6-23, B.Garcia 2-22,
Vanderfin 3-21, B.Gonzalez 1-9, McCarthy 2-2, Jimenez 1-2, A.Martinez 4-0.
PASSING: SJ- Kelly 5-10-0-36, Perez 0-1-0-0. BD- A.Martinez 11-21-2-72,
B.Gonzalez 0-1-0-0.
RECEIVING: SJ: Biegel 2-14, Buchanan 1-12, Adlesh 1-11, Anglin 2-4.
