Santa Ana’s two undefeated public-school teams played each other Friday at Santa Ana Stadium, and Santa Ana defeated Segerstrom.
It was a big game. Santa Ana’s 42-6 win gave the Saints sole possession of first place in the Golden West League.
Meanwhile, on the west side of town, another Santa Ana school was closing in on a league championship.
Godinez shut out Costa Mesa, 30-0. That clinched the Grizzlies’ first football league title.
It has been a season of twists and turns and other oddities at Godinez, which played its first varsity season in 2008. They Grizzlies changed quarterbacks a couple of times. That made them change their offensive system.
“We were running the spread offense,” Godinez coach Michael Echaves said. “Then we had to go to a two-back power system.”
Part of that move was shifting sophomore Patrick McMorris around the field. He was a quarterback for a couple of weeks before he settled in at tailback.
McMorris rushed for 307 yards and four touchdowns in the win over Costa Mesa.
Echaves reshuffled the defense, too.
“We got lit up by a couple of teams early,” he said. “We gave up 36 points to Santa Ana, 49 to Sunny Hills, 35 to Segerstrom. We made some moves on defense, and that group started playing better.”
Godinez got its first win against Rancho Alamitos, 21-3. The defense did its job again in the final nonleague game, a 3-0 overtime loss to Orange. The Grizzlies have given up only 31 points over their four Orange Coast League wins.
The defensive leader is senior middle linebacker Richy Tochihuitl. He was the Grizzlies’ leading tackler last year and is doing so again this year. Tochihuitl also is a leader academically, sporting a 4.8 grade-point average.
“An amazing young man,” said Echaves of Tochihuitl.
The offensive line was solid against Costa Mesa, opening the holes for McMorris whose older brother, Malik McMorris, was an All-Orange County fullback and defensive lineman a couple of seasons at Mater Dei. The front of sophomores Mario Aparicio and Mario Lopez, juniors Jason Flores and Jesus Solano and senior Luis Manuel has been a reliable unit as the Grizzlies clinched their first football league championship in a city that is going to have a couple of league champions.
TOP MATCHUPS
This the final week of the regular season so of course there are super-important games are all over the schedule. Among the week’s top matchups is Kennedy-Pacifica at Bolsa Grande on Thursday in the Empire League. It seemed like the Empire League would be easy to figure out until Valencia upset Tustin last week.
Also this week: El Modena at Brea Olinda on Friday, which is for the North Hills League championship; Buena Park can win the Freeway League title outright with a win at home over Troy on Friday; Mission Viejo and San Clemente take 3-0 South Coast League records into their game Friday at San Clemente ; and all of Friday’s Trinity League games – Orange Lutheran-St. John Bosco at Cerritos College, JSerra-Mater Dei at Santa Ana Stadium and Servite-Santa Margarita at Saddleback College – will impact that league’s standings and the CIF-Southern Section Division 1 playoff bracket.
CIF-SS PLAYOFFS
The CIF-Southern Section football playoff brackets will be released Sunday and will be available at ocvarsity.com upon release.
Sunday begins with the posting of at-large teams at 8 a.m. After that, the brackets are released in bunches: Divisions 2, 5 and 9 at 10 a.m.; Divisions 3, 6 and 11 at 10:30 a.m.; Division 1 at 11 a.m.; Divisions 4, 7 and 12 at 11:30 a.m.; and Divisions 8, 10 and 13 at noon.
As always, there will be a coach or two wondering why their team did not get an at-large berth. With the CIF-SS playoff format new this year – teams are placed into divisions by recent regular-season and playoff performance and not by league affiliation – there could be more disappointed and confused coaches than before.
For decades, a team was guaranteed a playoff berth if it finished at or beyond a specified threshold in its league’s final standings, i.e. being third-or-better in a six-team league locked up a playoff berth. This year, there could be some No. 3 teams from six-team leagues that won’t get into the playoffs if their division has an abundance of Nos. 1 and 2 teams, so that there might not be room in that division’s bracket to fit all of the No. 3 teams.
THE O.C. POLL
In the Trinity League, Orange Lutheran lost to Santa Margarita … Orange Lutheran defeated JSerra … JSerra defeated Santa Margarita. Now you know how difficult it was to vote on the county top 25 this week.
8-MAN PLAYOFFS
CIF-SS 8-man football brackets were released Monday. Sage Hill (5-3), which was in the 11-man Academy League last year and switched to 8-man football this year, plays host to Avalon (8-0) in Division 1. St. Michael’s Prep (5-3 overall, 1-2 in the Express League) plays at Desert Christian of Bermuda Dunes (5-4) in Division 2.
Contact the writer: sfryer@scng.com
