Photos by Shar Higa
We’ve heard nothing but good things about Wilson’s academic programs, which is why we were pretty surprised to be asked back for a second year to coach the Cardinal & Gold Spring Game for the Bruins—I mean, this is supposed to be a smart group of guys, after all. But since pretending to coach always beats pretending to work, we were happy to do the honorary duties. The original plan was actually to put the slam on the Press Telegram’s Doug Krikorian, but since he was “covering the Lakers game” (old sportswriter slang for chicken), it was LBPOSTsports vs. LBPOSTsports. True to form, we somehow still managed to lose, or at least, not win.
While our main goal was to not end up in a 14-14 tie, as we did last year…well, we still ended up in exactly that, a 14-14 tie. We learned a lot about next year’s Wilson team, which will be very young, but will feature some talent, too. Below is a small game writeup, followed by some brief analysis of the offensive and defensive units, and then some photos.
If you’re craving more football coverage, stay tuned for writeups on Lakewood’s spring game, Poly’s spring game, the 605 All-Star game featuring a ton of local talent (this Saturday), and of course, all the Passing League coverage you can shake a stick at.
14-14 Tie
The Cardinal team (coached by the be-bearded Mike Guardabascio) lost the coin flip, and started on defense, where the tone was set early with a sack from Jovan Magallon. It was a scoreless struggle until the second quarter, when returning starting QB Brett Harper pulled off an old-school video game play, doing two full reverse loops in the backfield before heaving a 40-yard TD down the left sideline. After he hit Magallon (who handled DT and TE duties for the Cardinal) on the 2PC, it was 8-0 Cardinal.
The Cardinal defense held strong, but Gold (coached by snazzily dressed JJ Fiddler) got on the board when David Lowe grabbed a bobbled pass off Keith White’s hands and darted into the end zone for an easy untouched score. The defense held on the 2PC to make it 8-6. Gold scored again on a beautiful pass from backup QB Andrew Perez to CJ Jiannino, and converted the 2PC to give them a 14-8 lead.
Harper continued a sharp afternoon with a tying TD pass, but in the absence of uprights, the Cardinal had to go for 2 with the score tied at 14—the pass fell incomplete, and despite a late surge from the Gold team, the clock expired with the game tied 14-14, and everybody went home to watch the Lakers game.
Asked for his thoughts on the game, Wilson coach Mario Morales said he had seen that his Bruins would need some work up front, but that he saw a lot of good competitive spirit. “And there was good QB play,” he said, “some good decisions made out there.”
Wilson has Passing League tourneys this Summer at Mission Viejo and Claremont, as well as the Moore League Passing League tourney at Poly on June 29th.
Offense
On offense, the Bruins will go as far as junior quarterback Brett Harper can take them. With a varsity year under his belt, the mobile signal caller looked comfortable in the shotgun spread sets. His ability to avoid the rush was on display in the pad-less scrimmage and he went sideline to sideline before he threw his first touchdown pass to Garion Manning.
In the backfield with Harper (Cardinal) and senior quarterback Andrew Perez (Gold) was the lighting/thunder attack of Walter Cook and Keith White. Cook was a great weapon out the backfield for the Gold team while White did a nice job on a few counter runs for Cardinal, but they were only two of a full stable of backs that saw time. It was plain to see that the Bruins have speed.
Spread out for Harper and Perez was a bunch of quickness and raw talent that shined brighter as the scrimmage got longer. Garion Manning brought speed and shiftiness to the Cardinal team. He showcased his talent on the first touchdown of the day as he got open in the corner while Harper went sideline-to-sideline to avoid the rush. For the Gold team, Perez continued to find Jovan Magallon. The tight end/slot receiver Magallon showed his hands on the second touchdown for Gold that tied the game.
Up front, the Wilson Bruins will be looking at the middle and the only returning starter, Xavier Larry. He controlled the calls and had a few pancake blocks while Jeff Gray used his big body to cut down outside pass rushers.
Defense
Defense has been the Bruins’ strong suit for the last few years, and it looks to continue to be so even with the regime change that’s occurred with Scott Meyer taking over D. Co duties. Linebacker play has been strong at Wilson recently, and returning starter Daniel Ludwig looks to keep the tradition rolling—he had a forced fumble and recovery on Thursday. Other standouts include Justin Hunter, who narrowly missed on a few picks, Preston Allred, David Lowe, and Chris Gaumer. Jede Fue has who had 62 tackles last year and will be a senior next season, will be another linebacker to watch. He’s bulked up and covered a lot of ground in Thursday’s game.
Magallon on the defensive line could be a wild card-type player. He will be one of a few players going both ways, likely seeing time at both tight end (he had a TD grab and a 2PC grab) and defensive line (where he had four sacks, a stat that gets an asterisk since it’s shirts and shorts only in Spring ball). Obviously we’re still ten weeks away from an actual game, but the returners from last year seemed to have stepped into a natural leadership role, and there’s on reason to expect the Bruins to be pushovers on the defensive side of the ball this year.
Photos
