Anthony Carter scrambles away from La Salle defenders during Bishop Diego’s 43-16 victory.
Top-ranked Bishop Diego devoured the first bite in the meaty part of its pre-league football schedule on Friday night.
After taking a couple of vicious hits from an amped La Salle team on their first offensive series, the ?Cardinals responded by recording a safety and scoring four unanswered touchdowns in a 43-16 win at La Playa Stadium, in a matchup between top-ten teams in the CiF Northwest Division on Friday night. La Salle is No. 8 in the poll.
Senior quarterback Gabe Molina played a spectacular game for Bishop. He passed for two touchdowns, had a 73-yard scoring run, intercepted a pass on defense and hit a punt out of bounds at the 2-yard line that set up the safety.
“As much as he’s playing offense and defense, to contribute the way he does in a game is quite impressive,” said Bishop Diego coach Tom Crawford of Molina.
“I kind of did whatever I needed to do,” Molina said. “I just went wherever I was needed. I heard my name, I didn’t really care where I was tonight.?Props to my whole team. We played really well. We played well against these guys, they?re a good team.”
The Cardinals (3-0) got big contributions from several players.?Running back Abel Gonzalez rushed for 120 yards on 11 carries and scored on a 69-yard run, quarterback/receiver/running back Anthony Carter scored a pair of touchdowns on a 53-yard pass from Molina and a 10-yard run, receiver B.J. Murillo took a handoff and outran La Salle defenders for a 45-yard TD and Christian Pearson caught a touchdown pass and nabbed his third interception of the young season.
Bishop led 29-0 before La Salle’s David LaSalle kicked a 26-yard field goal on the last play of the first half.
“They told me to put it between the 5 and the pylon and that’s what I did,” Molina said.
Molina was the Cardinals’ emergency punter.
“Gabe Molina did the punting because Anthony, who is our normal punter, was out, and Aidan Williams is our other punter? and he was out,” Crawford said. “So, for Gabe to step in and put the punt out at the 1-yard line like he did was huge.”
The Bishop defense then took over. On first down, John “Cowboy” Samson and Pearson broke through the line and smothered La Salle running back Milan Acquaah in the end zone for a safety.
“That was a huge boost for us,” said Molina.
One play after the Lancers kicked off to the Cardinals, Gonzalez took off on a 69-yard touchdown run. The PAT, taken from 35 yards out because of a penalty, was missed, but Bishop had taken a lot of the steam out of La Salle.
“I was very pleased ?the way we responded with the level of intensity and focus,” Crawford said. “Once we got into a litle bit of a rhythm, I thought we played pretty well for pretty good portions of the game.”
Bishop held the Lancers to just two first downs in the first half. The Cardinal offense, meanwhile, was nearly unstoppable. Carter returned to the field and helped engineer a 54-yard drive for a touchdown. Molina lobbed the ball to Pearson in the end zone and Santiago Bollag booted the PAT for a 15-0 lead in the first quarter.
Molina hit Carter on a slant pattern and Carter turned it into a 53-yard scored to make 22-0 at the 10:07 mark of the second quarter.
The Bishop defense came up big again as Nathan Solano and Pearson stopped the Lancers’ Kenny Giles short of a first down on a fourth-and-two play at the 20.
The Cardinals’ offense responded with a 71-yard touchdown drive, capped by a 10-yard run by Carter over left tackle to go up 29-0.
La Salle finally got its playmakers involved in the final two minutes of the half and booted the field goal. The big play on the drive was a 40-yard pass from 6-4 starting quarterback Will Pyburn to 6-3 athletic wide receiver Jared Akins.
Molina’s deft ball handling on an option play and good blocking up front led to his 73-yard touchdown run for a 36-3 advantage.
“I didn?t know I had those wheels. I was just as surprised as everyone else,” he said of the long run.
On La Salle’s next possession, Molina picked off a pass from second string quarterback Aaron McCorkle. Two plays later, Murillo took a handoff while running in motion and kept on going until he reached the end zone with 4:09 left in the game.
