Fryer breaks down Week 2's blowouts, drama
Either we’re really good at selecting an Orange County top 10, or some of those top 10 teams are not playing challenging competition.
County top 10 teams that played this week all won their games --- by an average margin of 31 points.
The most one-sided were these three: No. 1 Santa Margarita, 55, Trabuco Hills 0; No. 6 El Toro 52, Canyon 0; and No. 8 Orange Lutheran 42, El Modena 7.
So the best games Friday were outside of the top 10.
JSerra beat Huntington Beach, 20-13. Dante Pettis returned a blocked punt 5 yards for the winning touchdown with 3:07 to go.
Esperanza put together a great second-half rally to beat Capistrano Valley, 27-21.
See, you really don’t have to go to a Trinity League game to get some football drama. Speaking of the Trinity League and drama …
Santa Margarita had a distracting week, with starting tackle Erik Bunte leave the school to enroll at Mission Viejo. He is the third Eagle from last year’s state championship team to transfer to Mission Viejo.
Bunte’s athletic eligibility at Mission Viejo has not been decided; Scout.com quoted Bunte as saying his relationship with Santa Margarita coaches had deteriorated. Transferring because of stated differences with a coach falls under the "athletically motivated transfer" clause that, when invoked, can limit or eliminate a transferred student-athlete’s eligibility.
Santa Margarita soldiered on without him, and beat Trabuco Hills by that previously mentioned margin, at, ironically, Mission Viejo High.
The Eagles were fired up Friday. They produced 609 yards of total offense, a school record beating the 583 yards of offense Santa Margarita totaled in 1997 in the classic 55-42 victory over Tustin in a CIF championship game. Carson Palmer was the Santa Margarita quarterback, and DeShaun Foster was the star running back at Tustin.
Servite was the one top 10 team with a bye. But it still was an active week for Friars football. After Servite’s 24-23 victory Saturday against Rancho Cucamonga, No. 10 in the state at the time, offensive coordinator Matt Mitchell was relieved of his duties.
Mitchell knew there were philosophical differences with head coach Troy Thomas. Mitchell said he was "in shock" that he was fired.
Thomas said, "It wasn’t about Xs and Os, it was about just having a different way of doing things. It just wasn’t meshing."
Servite offensive line coach Jim O’Connell will be offensive coordinator Friday when Servite plays Edison at Cerritos College. O’Connell was head coach at Tesoro when that school won CIF championships in 2004 and ’05.
Edison beat Villa Park, 27-7, Thursday. That’s a 20-point victory over a team that is favored by league coaches to win the Century League championship.
Edison and the rest of the Sunset League team were moved from the Pac-5 Division into the Southwest Division, which also includes the Century, Empire, Freeway and Sea View leagues. Concerns that the Sunset League would be too good for the other division leagues sure seemed substantiated Thursday. Edison had prevalent advantages in speed and ferocity.
Deven Boston has prevalent advantages. He rushed for 405 yards and five touchdowns Thursday in Buena Park’s 51-12 victory over Magnolia. Boston, a junior, has rushed for 824 yards and 14 touchdowns in three games, and is averaging 14 yards a carry.
El Toro quarterback Conner Manning is hotter than anyone. He has passed for 1,210 yards over three games, an average of 403 yards a game.
Manning set the county single-season passing yardage last year with 4,219. He beat the record held by Mater Dei/USC’s Matt Barkley by 650 yards. After three games last year, Manning had thrown for 731 yards.
El Toro is 3-0 against teams that are a combined 4-5. The Chargers’ next three games are against teams that are a combined 2-3. But with their return to the South Coast League, after years in the Sea View, the Chargers playing San Clemente and Tesoro in back-to-back weeks, and Mission Viejo in the regular-season finale.
Competition is coming for Manning and El Toro, but not for a while. We count the weeks until league games begin all over Orange County football.
