Tesoro does everything right but win

ANAHEIM- Tesoro took no bypasses on its way to its first Pac-5 football championship game. You could call it the path of most resistance.

You don't whistle past Mater Dei, Orange Lutheran and Long Beach Poly. You have to line up and convince them, helmet-to-helmet.

Tesoro came breathtakingly close to finishing off that triple crown at Angel Stadium on Saturday night,but a green-and-gold barricade finally stopped the Titans, 20-17.

If Tesoro is looking for consolation this morning, there are plenty of sources. Poly has wrenched the fourth quarter away from a lot of local teams, for a lot of years now. When you lead, 17-7, early in the fourth quarter, and you have outplayed the Jackrabbits more decisively than that, it's a tough thing to learn firsthand. This was Tesoro's turn in the barrel.

But the Titans gave it a major shot.

"You try to stop the big play against Poly, but the big play can happen play after play after play," said a disconolate Preston King. "We lost a team that has a lot of guys we're going to be watching play on Saturdays."

King usually has a lot to do with that defense. If not, he usually has a lot to do with Tesoro's offense. Here he swung the early rhythm of this game by what he did in between.

He returned punts to the Poly 26 and 38 yard lines on the first two possessions. Tesoro scored on neither, but Poly, not the finest-tuned offensive machine when everything's favorable, found itself stymied by field position holes.

When King watched the third punt bounce nicely back toward Poly and settle on the 38 again, the Titans knew what to do. King's throwback pass to quarterback Robbie Picazo set up fourth-and-goal at the one, and Isaac Tago barged over for the first touchdown.

The rest of the half was painful for Poly fans and forced the many critics of Coach Raul Lara to double up on their blood pressure medicine. (Lara is 94-13 in his Poly career, by the way.)

The Jackrabbits had three first downs for the half and gained 44 yards on 23 plays. They had only one short third-down play, a third-and-3, which was incomplete. Linebackers John Michael Davis, Scott Graves and Jake Warden kept firing through the gaps and sharing the spoils in Poly's backfield, and whenever the Jackrabbits went wide, they were outnumbered.

For the half, Poly snapped the ball twice in Tesoro territory. Tesoro's first 19 plays began on Poly's side of the 50.

But the Jackrabbits have trailed before, and they have endured a few playoff bumps this year, and here they came again.

Improvisations by quarterback Morgan Fennell and exciting junior Cory Westbrook picked up long third downs in the third quarter, and then Richardson popped outside for his tying touchdown.

Tesoro didn't just answer. It speed-dialed.

King tried a flea-flicker pass at midfield and lost 4 yards when nobody got open. So, on the next play, Picazo dropped back and threw easily his best pass of the night into the hands of Brett Gudim, sailing along by his lonesome, for a 46-yard touchdown that put the Jackrabbits down again.

A field goal made it 17-7 before Fennell, who was starting to wear Tesoro helmet marks on his rib cage, fired a parabola to Damon Smith in the Tesoro end zone. Tanner Hodgdon blocked that extra point to keep the lead at 17-13.

But Stanjarivus McKay, who had intercepted Picazo earlier, broke up a third-down pass to get the ball back for Poly with 4:13 to go.

And when Tesoro's linebackers came hard on third-and-2, Melvin Richardson hit the right spot, shrugged off a couple of failed tackles, and sprinted down the sideline for 60 yards of gotcha. The Jackrabbits led, 20-17, with 2:56 remaining.

That's where the road ended.

Picazo was nearly picked for a touchdown by Matthew Jones on first down. On fourth down, he tried to step up in the pocket but was collared by Iuta Tepa, who will be playing very late on Saturday night for the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors next year, and threw into the ground.

It just showed, again, that winning 50 or so little plays sometimes isn't good enough to overcome two or three big ones.

But it isn't the destination, it's the path. It is hoped the Tesoro guys can appreciate that, although it might take a decade or two.

Contact the writer: mwhicker@ocregister.com