ANAHEIM – The Trinity League doesn’t offer any occasions for a letdown game, especially when you’re the top-ranked team in the county like Mater Dei.
Throw in the fact that the week after their highly anticipated and eventual hard-fought victory over St. John Bosco, the Monarchs had to go right into the rivalry week against Servite and the focus became clear early in the week. Still, it took some work before the end result became an impressive win.
“We weren’t very good Monday, we were fair Tuesday and Wednesday,” Mater Dei coach Bruce Rollinson said. “I didn’t see this coming, but what we did was we got going on offense early and then we played a good football game.”
That’s one way of putting it as the Monarchs won their fifth consecutive game in their series with Servite, 58-16, Friday night at Angel Stadium in front of an estimated crowd of 10,000.
Servite falls to 4-5 overall and 1-3 in league.
This was the 56th meeting between the two teams.
It was just the second for quarterback JT Daniels and he handled it like he has handled just about every situation this year – with extreme poise.
The sophomore quarterback completed 26 of 28 passes for 327 yards and six touchdowns to key the offense for the Monarchs (9-0, 4-0). Two touchdowns went to Bru McCoy and Osiris St. Brown and one each to Amon-Ra St. Brown and Nikko Remigio.
“You have to chalk this up to the O-Line,” Daniels said. “Tommy Brown, Chris Murray, Kekaniokoa Gonzalez, Austin Faoliu, the list goes on. We just grounded and pounded tonight. That was the game plan, if they came out in 30 Front and dropped eight, we were going to pound them and that’s what we did.”
Senior running back Raphael Jones was the beneficiary of the work of the front. He rushed for 144 yards on 14 carries and scored one TD.
“He’s a smart dude,” Daniels said. “There were a couple of times on the audibles where I get credit for, Ralph (Raphael) comes up and says hey, there’s No. 19 he’s coming and I’ll check, Shakobe Harper does the same thing. We just have a really smart running back core.”
The game had the feel of a shootout as Daniels and Servite quarterback Tyler Lytle had their success in the first half in the passing game.
Lytle’s main target was Kyle Ford. They connected nine times for 171 yards and two touchdowns in the first half (80 and 38 yards).
Mater Dei caught a big break as time expired at the end of the first half as Daniels’ Hail Mary attempt was tipped in the end zone and fell perfectly into the hands of St. Brown who was standing at the 1 and went into the end zone for a 35-14 lead.
In the second half, the Monarchs did their best to disrupt the Lytle-Ford combination.
“They got a little bit more pressure on Tyler (Lytle) in the second half,” Servite coach Scott Meyer said.
Servite next faces Santa Margarita, another 1-3 team.
“We have to turn the page, like we did with the (St. John) Bosco game, we came out against JSerra and had one of our best games,” Meyer said. “We have to put this behind us. We have to win next week. We would be 5-5 (overall) and 2-3 (in league), we have to get to 5-5 to have a shot (at the playoffs).”
Contact the writer: dcalhoun@scng.com
