“As the Field Tilted” would be an ideal title to the story of Bishop Diego’s loss to Nordhoff on Friday night.
The Cardinals often looked like they were running up hill, while it was all down hill for the visiting Rangers as they rolled to a 35-7 victory in a Tri-Valley League football game at La Playa Stadium.
It was Nordhoff’s sixth straight win, raising its records to 6-1 and 2-0 in the TVL. Bishop fell to 0-7, 0-2.
Nordhoff quarterback Skyler Logsdon threw three touchdown passes in the first half to lead the Rangers.
Unable to move the ball, Bishop gave Nordhoff a short field to work with on three of its five scores.
“You could see the field kind of tilt in terms of field position because we couldn’t get anything going offensively,” said Bishop coach Tom Crawford. “On their first two scores they really ended up in a position where they had a real short field.”
The Rangers went 45 yards to take a 7-0 lead. Logsdon hit Sean Bettles over the middle and Bettles broke it for a 24-yard touchdown play at the 2:27 mark.
Nordhoff missed a 39-yard field goal on its next possession, but its defense quickly got the ball back by forcing the Cardinals to go three-and-out for the fourth straight time. Starting for their 40, the Rangers scored in eight plays. Logsdon passed to Logan Crow in the left flat and Crow took off 35 yards for the score with 6:19 left in the second quarter.
The biggest blow, however, came when the tilt of the field was working in the Cardinals’ favor. A punt and back-to-back penalties pinned Nordhoff back to its 2-yard line.
“We got them pretty well pinned down there, and we can stay in this game if we can stop them and get the ball back and score ourselves,” said Crawford. “I’m hoping it’s a 14-7 game at halftime and instead with let them go 90-98 yards or whatever. That was difficult.”
The Rangers actually went 84 yards. On second-and-eight from the 16, Logsdon found Alex Leckie wide open. Leckie caught the ball and outran the last Bishop defender for a 21-0 lead with 1:58 remaining in the half.
“It’s a play fake and if the free safety bites on the play fake, I send it over the top, over his ear,” said Logsdon of the back-breaking bomb. “That was a good play.”
Logsdon completed 11 of 21 passes for 210 yards and three scores.
“We’ve got a lot of weapons. (Bishop) tried to shut us down in the beginning, and they had a good game plan to stop us. But we made some adjustments. We started running routes that worked best against their defense,” the quarterback said.
The Rangers were on the down slide again after forcing Bishop to punt from its 10. They took over at their 30 and scored in five plays. Running back Cody Doolittle did the honors on a 5-yard run to make the score 28-0.
Doolittle took over the running duties after starting halfback Justin Burgess went out in the first quarter with an ankle injury.
The Rangers didn’t miss a beat as Doolittle pounded out 88 yards on 20 carries.
“Cody was our starting running back going in (to the season),” said Nordhoff coach Tony Henney. “He’s starting to play a little more defense and we’re rotating him a little bit. Cody is a hard runner.”
Henney noted that things opened for us offense once they figured out Bishop’s defensive scheme.
“In the second quarter we really picked it up,” he said. “Tom Crawford, I think, is one of the best coaches in the area. I knew they would be well schemed and it was like, ‘What is he going to do.’ It took our kids and our coaches a good quarter to figure it out.
“They got to be proud,” he added. “I thought the Bishop kids played hard and excellent, but we got some firepower and once we’re able to get some guys in the open field we can do some things.”
The Cardinals started out the game on a good note. Their aggressive defense shut down Nordhoff. Joe Salda had a sack, Nic Mon made two big plays in the secondary and Garrett Garcia delivered a hard hit on Doolittle.
But they hurt themselves with mistakes.
“We had some breakdowns and it’s disappointing to have those this late in the season,” Crawford said. “The frustration level is high. That was disappointing, and it’s disappointing to play at home like this, particularly on senior night. We were not able to sustain that first 8-10 minutes in terms of our intensity and physical play.”
Bishop came out of the locker room at halftime and put together its best drive of the game, moving to the Nordhoff 34. But the Cardinals fumbled and Crow picked up the loose ball and rambled 63 yards for the touchdown and a 35-0 lead.
The Cardinals put together another good drive in the fourth quarter and avoided shutout when Brandon Gonzalez scored on a 2-yard run.
The touchdown gave Bishop some hope for its last three games of the season.
“We got to a little soul searching here and see if we can pull anything together for the last three games,” said Crawford.
NORDHOFF 35, BISHOP DIEGO 7
Nordhoff…7 21 7 0 — 35
Bishop Diego…0 0 0 7 — 7
First quarter
N — Bettles 24 pass from Logsdon (Rhodes kick), 2:27
Second quarter
N — Crow 35 pass from Logsdon (Rhodes kick), 6:19
N — Leckie 84 pass from Logsdon (Rhodes kick), 1:58
N — Doolittle 5 run (Rhodes kick) :33
Third quarter
N — Crow 63 fumble return (Rhodes kick), 8:22
Fourth quarter
BD — B. Gonzalez 2 run (Morando kick), 2:53
TEAM TOTALS N BD
First Downs…16, 9
Rushes-yards…34-171, 23-60
Passing yards…210, 79
Total yards…381, 139
Passes…11-22-0, 9-19-1
Fumbles-lost…2-1, 1-1
Punts-Avg…2-43, 7-31.6
Penalties…11-134 5-27
Individual Statistics
Rushing: N—Doolittle 20-88, Johnson 1-43, Burgess 3-16, Otero 3-13, No. 26 4-10. BD — B. Gonzalez 11-40, P. Garcia 5-24, B. Garcia 3-5, Holland 2 (minues 14), Valle 2-7.
Passing: N — S. Logsdon 11-21-0, 210, J. Logsdon 0-1-0. BD: Holland 9-19-1, 79.
Receiving: N— Crow 3-62, Leckie 3-111, Bettles 2-5, Lowen 1-17, Johnson 1-7, Otero 1-8. BD —G. Garcia 4-53, P. Garcia 2-8, Robitaille 1-8, B. Garcia 1-6, Torrellas 1-4.
Missed Field goal: N, 39 WR.
