Sometimes, you know a game is going to live up to the hype—fortunately for over 10,000 fans who came out to watch Poly and Lakewood play in the CIF Semifinals, that collective gut feeling was right on the money, as the Jackrabbits defeated the Lancers in a classic 20-10 showdown. The excitement over this game started about a half-second after Poly’s victory over Esperanza last week was official, and it continued right up until kickoff—we can guarantee you’ve never seen two teams more pumped to do their pre-game stretches.
The Lancers came out with a winning gameplan in the first quarter—run Jerry Stone, and keep Poly’s offense on the sideline. Their opening drive went 58 yards, and took over six minutes off the clock, as Stone chewed up time along with yardage. Poly was running a 3-4, and the Lancers initially had success moving the ball into the interior of the line, traditionally a more or less impossible task against the Poly Wall. After a Jesse Scroggins pass was dropped in the end zone, the Lancers settled for three—given that Stone had 8 carries for 43 yards and they’d moved the ball with relative ease, Lakewood’s offense was definitely feeling good about itself.
That confidence showed soon after on an impressive 80-yard touchdown drive that saw Stone gaining another 50 yards, and Jesse Scroggins tossing a screen to Kevin Anderson for the 8-yard touchdown. Poly then managed to march just far enough to allow David Skara to boot a 45-yard field goal through the uprights, and to hold Lakewood out of the end zone as the first half expired. Other than those two positives, they didn’t have much going in the first half. They were held to 76 yards of offense, while the defense gave up ten points. The Lancers possessed the ball for 15 of 24 minutes, and Lakewood ran 30 offensive plays to Poly’s 16.
It must have been a hell of a halftime speech.
Coming out of the locker room, the Jackrabbits looked like they were the ones up 10-3. A long march into the red zone ended when Talia Crichton came around the end and forced Poly QB Morgan Fennell to fumble it, but the Poly D held Lakewood to a three-and-out, and the offense took advantage, picking up where they left off on a 47-yard scoring drive, capped by a one-yard Melvin Richardson TD.
At the start of the fourth quarter—and this is how you can tell from the sideline that a game is going to be a classic, no matter what—the score was tied, 10-10, and the ball was resting on the 50-yard line. The clock was running low for blocking adjustments and gap protection—it was big play time. Lakewood’s first snap produced a 31-yard Kevin Anderson reception, moving them into the red zone. Big play: Lakewood. Then, on the next play, the exchange between Scroggins and Stone didn’t quite happen, and Poly LB George Daily-Lyles dove onto the loose ball. Big play: Poly.
Both teams struggled to find traction, or the knockout big play, until Darius Williams-Fox made an acrobatic interception of an ambitious Scroggins attempt, and then ran the pick back to the Lancers’ 20. Big play: Poly. The ‘Rabbits had to settle for a field goal, but Alan Roniss (in for an injured Skara) did the job, and gave them a three-point lead with less than three minutes left. Feeling the pressure, and the heat from the Poly front line, Scroggins again forced his next attempt, and this time it was picked by Stanjarivus McKay (who intercepted Scroggins the first time these two teams played this year). Leading the way for his team as he had all game, Melvin Richardson sealed the deal on a huge play with two minutes on the clock when he sprinted into the end zone from 36 yards out, giving Poly the 20-10 lead, their eventual margin of victory.
Richardson led a night-day turnaround for Poly’s offense, which scored 17 points and gained twice as many yards as they had in the first half. Richardson finished with 20 carries for 140 yards and two touchdowns, and showed why Jerry Stone wasn’t the only running back to watch. “I wanted to show them who Melvin Richardson was,” he said after the game. “I wanted to show that I was the best running back on the field today.”
His efforts were boosted by the Poly D, which stiffened up considerably in the second half, shutting out the Lancers, coming up with three turnovers, and limiting Jerry Stone to six carries for eleven yards—he finished with 18 for 108. Daily-Lyles led Poly with 13 tackles, four of them for a loss, and one sack as well. He and fellow LB Kenny Tuiloma were all smiles afterward, saying, “We overthought it in the first half, but we settled down and just played in the second.” Said Poly D-Coordinator Jeff Turley, “Lakewood had a good blocking plan—we had to change our game plan for the second half.”
“Their game plan was good,” said Lakewood LB Trevor Erno. “They threw a lot of people at me. Still, it’s a win for our program to have gotten this far.” That Poly game plan included putting a lot of bodies on Erno, Lakewood’s leading tackler who was limited to just 5 on the night. With their best player locked up, several other Lancers rose to the occasion, and Dion Bailey (who had two solo tackles of Richardson that prevented TDs) and Aaron Aviles (whose three tackles of Richardson inside the five forced the third field goal) nearly kept Lakewood in it by themselves.
Don’t dismiss Erno’s statement as empty, however—Lakewood has been inching closer and closer to knocking off Poly for their last three meetings, and they played three weeks of good playoff football this season. The Lancers will also be returning more key starters next season than any other team in the league, including Scroggins, Anderson (eight catches for 84 yards) and Stone, who was personally praised by Snoop Dogg after the game. “We’re in trouble next season,” said Poly head coach Raul Lara, crediting Lakewood coach Thadd MacNeal with the job he’s done building the Lakewood program.
But ultimately it was Poly who came out with the W, and Poly who will advance to the CIF championship, their ninth in twelve years. “They win these close games,” said MacNeal. “They’ve been doing that for a while.”
Turley gathered some of his defensive standouts after the game, and they illuminated why they’ve been able to do that. “All gas, no brakes, that’s our motto,” said LB Matt Jones, echoed by McKay. “They don’t score, they don’t win,” said Williams-Fox.
Turley elaborated. “That’s what defense does. We finish things.”
Poly will try to finish taking care of business next week, when they face the winner of tonight’s O. Lu/Tesoro match in the CIF Championship at Angel Stadium. If they can win, and do so in a convincing fashion, they could be headed to a state championship game the following week in Carson.