“Good things happen when you play good defense,” Millikan head coach Rod Petkovic said after his Rams’ 3-0 defeat of the Cabrillo Jaguars.  He was referring to that day’s shutout, but he may as well have been talking about the Ram’s 2008-2009 campaign.  They’re 19-2-2, and in those 23 games they’ve posted 14 shutouts.  In seven league contests, they’ve allowed a grand total of one goal to an opponent.  As a result, good things are happening—the Rams are on top of the standings, and at the top of the CIF rankings.

The first half was all Millikan, as the Rams took advantage of Cabrillo’s spacious field (the biggest and best-kept pitch in the league) by moving the ball very well from player to player, and they maintained possession for the majority of the first forty minutes.  They capitalized with the game’s first score just twelve minutes in, when senior Ruben Sandoval nailed perhaps the finest goal of the Moore League season—creating a little space for himself with a nice side-dribble, he drilled a perfect ball into the top left part of the goal, over Cabrillo’s keeper’s grasp.  The Jaguars would get a few opportunities later (including two times in a 90-second stretch where two Jaguars touched the ball in the Rams’ box, neither chance resulting in a shot attempt), but were unable to convert, and Millikan took a 1-0 lead into halftime of a very close game.

Carrying their momentum from the end of the first half into the first fifteen minutes of the second, the Jags pressed hard, and nearly had the equalizer—Phillip Regalado, who penetrated well for most of the game, nearly got a head-in, but each time they came close, Rams ‘tender Jorge Becerra cleaned it up.

The Rams’ counterpunch came in the 67^th minute, when Nelson Preciado touched it in to Edgar Melendrez, who took a shot which was deflected short, but not cleared—Preciado followed and netted it for the 2-0 lead.  That goal seemed to take the air out of Cabrillo’s sails—the Jags, on their home field in front of probably the largest crowd for a league boys’ soccer game so far this season, had been running hard and playing more physically tough than in their first meeting up to that point.  Just ten minutes later, Melendrez stole the ball in Cabrillo’s territory, and swept from right to left, outrunning the Cabrillo defender and shooting it by the Jaguar goalie, giving the Rams their ultimate 3-0 margin.

“They just dominated the first half,” said Cabrillo coach Pat Noyes after the game.  “In the second, I felt one was coming, but we gave up the second—that ended the game.”  Cabrillo is now 3-2-2 in league, in the middle of the pack.

“It was a spirited game,” said Petkovic.  “It’s a beautiful field, the sun is out, both teams wanted to play hard, and they did.”  Elaborating on his team’s defensive effort, he said he loves shutouts because, “It’s a total team effort.  It means every player marked his man and disrupted their offense.”  The Rams are now 6-0-1 in league, and have defeated Wilson, Jordan, and Cabrillo in their last three games.  They’ve beaten their closest followers in the league standings by a whopping combined 10-0.