Brandon Gonzalez of Bishop Diego had a career game running the football, but it wasn’t enough to get the Cardinals their first win of the season.
Gonzalez rushed for 179 yards, scored three touchdowns and passed for another. Fillmore, however, pulled off the play of the night in the fourth quarter and rallied for a 27-25 victory over the Cardinals in a non-league game Friday at La Playa Stadium.
Trailing 25-20, Fillmore faced a third and 11 from the Bishop Diego 15-yard line. Quarterback Corey Cole rolled to his left and threw back to a wide-open Zach Golson along the right sideline. Once Golson caught the ball, it was clear sailing to the end zone for an 85-yard scoring play.
“We hadn’t seen it,” Bishop Diego coach Tom Crawford said of the play. “We were in zone coverage; the kid should not have been that wide open, but they disguised the play well. I commended Matt Dollar, their head coach. It was a great call at that time — a little bit risky if the quarterback can’t get the ball off. But he made nice throw and we didn’t have anybody there. It was a great play at a critical time in the game.”
While it had the look of an improvised play, Dollar noted that the play is in his playbook.
“We keep looking for people to over pursue and over pursue, and they fall asleep on that,” he said. “We kind of thought it would be there. It’s a great call by our offensive coordinator, coach (Curtis) Garner. He saw that. You hope it gets you the first down, you don’t expect it to be like that. It was and we’ll take it.”
The defeat was tough on the Cardinals (0-3), because it came against a team they matched up against.
“(The outcome) could have been better, but it was nice to be in a competitive contest and see your kids play as hard and see the improvement we’ve made in a couple of weeks of time,” said Crawford.
On the play of Gonzalez, Crawford was full of praise.
“For a kid to be only sophomore, to be out there on almost every single play, to play as hard and well as he does, he’s a very gifted kid with a lot of heart.”
Gonzalez made his presence known right away. On the game’s first play from scrimmage, he broke through the Fillmore line and rambled 72 yards for a touchdown.
“It was supposed to be a sweep and Brandon cut it inside,” said Crawford. “It looked like they over pursued and he saw the pursuit across the top and just cut inside and found a lane. Brandon is just going to get better and better because he’s starting to figure it out and getting comfortable with the role we’ve got him in. He ran hard every play.”
In addition to running the football, Gonzalez showed that he’s a threat throwing it, too,
On a halfback option, he hit Paul Garcia on a 13-yard pass for the the Cardinals’ second touchdown. Kyle Holland’s PAT gave Bishop a 13-0 lead with 7:56 left in the first quarter.
Fillmore’s offense finally got going after Bishop was forced to punt. The Flashes drove 61 yards on seven plays with Nick Paz scoring the touchdown on a 7-yard run behind right guard. Ernesto Ballesteros kicked the PAT to make it 13-7 with 1:00 left in the first quarter
Bishop used a fake punt and a facemask penalty on the Flashes to keep a drive alive and go ahead 19-7 with 3:17 left in the second quarter.
Gonzalez scored on a 1-yard run, but the Cardinals missed the PAT —they missed three (two kicks and a pass) on the night.
“This was the second game in a row that we didn’t execute on extra points,” said Crawford. “That’s part of what we told the kids. Those little mistake can cost you in a competitive game. We didn’t do a good job on extra points.”
Fillmore put together an impressive drive to narrow the deficit to 19-14. The big play was a 22-yard pass to 6-3 Chris DeLaPaz, who used his height advantage to make the catch at the Bishop 18. Three plays later, Golson scored from the 1 with 39 seconds left in the half.
That set the tone for the Flashes in the second half. They took the kickoff and drove 48 yards to score a go-ahead touchdown. Golson crashed over from the 1 to put the Flashes up 20-19.
“Teams haven’t been beating us, Fillmore’s been beating Fillmore,” Dollar said. “We’ve been making mental errors. We did that in first half — that first touchdown … mental error. We’ve had those issues. Finally (the players are) learning to calm down, play football, stay at home, occupy the gaps — assignment-ready football. It definitely set in in the second half.”
But Bishop wasn’t going to roll over. The Cardinals responded with a 12-play, 63-yard drive, capped by Gonzalez’s third TD of the game, a 4-yard run, to retake the lead at 25-20 with 11:48 to play. They misfired on a two-point conversion pass.
The teams traded possessions before the Flashes pulled off the big play for the winning score.
“We just dug deep.,” Golson said. “We had heart. We knew we could win this game. We knew we could beat this team. We came out flat, but we came back.”
Bishop still had time to pull out the game, but the Cardinals couldn’t make plays through the air, and Fillmore used bruising running back Matt DeLaCruz to keep the ball until the clock ran out.
“They took it to us in the second half,” Dollar said. “We were just lucky to come out on top at the end.”
FILLMORE 27, BISHOP DIEGO 25
Fillmore 7 7 6 7 — 27
Bishop Diego 13 6 0 6 — 25
First quarter
BD — B. Gonzalez 72 run (kick failed), 11:40
BD — P. Garcia 13 pass from B. Gonzalez (Holland kick), 7:56
F — Paz 7 run (Ballesteros kick), 1:00
Second quarter
BD — B. Gonzalez 1 run (kick failed), 3:17
F — Paz 4 pass from Cole (Ballesteros kick), :39
Third quarter
F — Z. Golson 1 run (pass failed), 6:02
Fourth quarter
BD — Gonzalez 4 run (pass failed), 11:48
F — Z Golson 85 pass from Cole (Ballesteros kick), 6:31
TEAM TOTALS F, BD
First downs 17 16
Rushes-yards 49-233 37-194
Passing yards 111 101
Comp-Att-Int 6-10-0 3-11-0
Sacked-yards lost 0-00 2-17
Punts-avg. 2-42.5 4-43.0
Fumbles-lost 3-0 4-1
Penalties-yards 6-51 5-31
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING — Fillmore: Z. Golson 17-68, Paz 10-49, DeLaCruz 8-69, Cole 11-32, J. Golson 3-15, Hernandez 1-0. Bishop Diego: B. Gonzalez 26-179, P. Garcia 3-8, Holland 5-1, B. Garcia 2-3, Torrellas 1-3.
PASSING — Fillmore: Cole 3-11-0-111. Bishop Diego: Holland 5-9-0-88, B. Gonzalez 1-1-0-13.
RECEIVING — Fillmore: C. DeLaPaz 1-22, N. Paz 1-4, Z. Golson 1-85. Bishop Diego: P. Garcia 3-50, G. Garcia 1-11, B. Garcia 1-11.
MISSED FIELD GOALS — None
TEAM RECORDS — Fillmore 1-2, Bishop Diego 0-3.
