Starting the high school football week in Orange County with notes, comments and observations …
1. Big showdown this week: This is the week we get to see St. John Bosco vs. Mater Dei. They play Friday night at Santa Ana Stadium.
MaxPreps.com and USA Today have Mater Dei at No. 1 and St. John Bosco at No. 2 in their national high school football rankings. So does CalPreps.com.
Both teams are 6-0 and won their Trinity League openers last week. St. John Bosco cruised to a 49-3 win over Servite. (The Twitterverse was abuzz when Servite had a 3-0 lead.) Mater Dei had a more difficult time of it, beating JSerra 21-13 after trailing for most of the first half. The closer-than-expected result was equal parts JSerra playing well and Mater Dei looking ahead to playing Bosco.
Talk went on for weeks that this week’s game would be played at SoFi Stadium. Mater Dei, the home team, became uncomfortable with some elements that were being added to the proposal to play the game at SoFi, and school officials decided to keep the game at Santa Ana Stadium.
Mater Dei won last year’s Trinity League meeting 42-21 on its way to winning the CIF-SS Division 1 championship. Mater Dei has won four of the last six meetings with the Braves.
This year? If the Braves want to win, they need to put consistent pressure on Mater Dei quarterback Elijah Brown, but that’s something that no Monarchs opponent has been able to do the past two seasons. For Mater Dei to win, it needs to own the field-position battle, with kickoffs sent to the end zone for touchbacks and punts downed well inside the 20-yard line, to offset — as much as possible — St. John Bosco’s big-play capability.
2. No tickets? No problem. Tickets for the St. John Bosco-Mater Dei game went on sale online Monday at 9 a.m., and before you could type “GoFan.co” they were gone. Students, staff and families got the majority of the tickets. That’s the way it should be.
Bally Sports West will televise the game live Friday at 7:30 p.m.
3. Other big games this week. When I jotted down a list of the best games Friday, I came up with 14 of them. Among them is JSerra (3-3 overall, 0-1 Trinity League) against Santa Margarita (4-2, 0-1) at Saddleback College. Maybe Mater Dei was looking ahead to Bosco last week; that’s still an impressive score for JSerra.
4. Santa Margarita was the better team but … Orange Lutheran beat Santa Margarita 28-26 last week. That’s how it goes sometimes.
Santa Margarita had 334 yards of total offense to Orange Lutheran’s 244, but Orange Lutheran had Jireh Moe a 6-foot, 270-pound defensive tackle. Moe, a transfer who became eligible last week, blocked two extra-point kick attempts, recovered a fumble and had a fourth-quarter sack.
5. Other top matchups: There are several excellent nonleague games on Friday’s schedule, including: No. 15 Canyon (6-0) vs. No. 17 Villa Park (2-4) at El Modena High; Aliso Niguel (4-2) at No. 19 Capistrano Valley (3-3); and No. 14 Tesoro (4-2) at No. 21 Trabuco Hills (5-1).
6. Balanced Garden Grove League. Five of the teams in the Garden Grove League have a .500 or better record, including Rancho Alamitos at 6-0. Bolsa Grande, long one of the league’s bottom teams, improved to 4-2 overall last week by beginning league with a 14-8 win over Santiago (4-2).
7. Familiar name. Chris Hurley is the Rancho Alamitos quarterback. The Hurley family has sent outstanding players to various schools, including Garden Grove, Pacifica and Rancho Alamitos.
8. Nine. There are nine undefeated teams in Orange County. They are Canyon, Crean Lutheran, Cypress, Edison, El Modena, Laguna Hills, Mater Dei, Westminster and Yorba Linda.
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9. A good bye. If ever a team needed a bye week, it’s San Juan Hills. The Stallions are 0-7 against a crazy-tough schedule. They do not play this week before playing at El Toro in a Sea View League game Oct. 14.
10. Is this basketball? The hoops season is off to an early start, with Los Alamitos rolling to a 69-49 win over Santa Margarita before scoring 61 points in a win over Newport Harbor. Hold on … grabbed the wrong file … those are the past two Los Alamitos football games. Never mind.
