Upset renews Rustlers’ season
Thirteen days is an eternity for a football team. It’s enough time to heal physical wounds, align new and polish old strategic elements, and, perhaps most importantly, restructure tender psyches.
Golden West College took ample advantage of all three as it progressed through its bye week into preparation for Saddleback, ranked No. 2 in the state and No. 1 in Southern California.
The result was a 20-17 Rustlers upset on Saturday at Orange Coast College, renewing hope for what had been a dismal 1-4 season and validating that the most important piece of equipment on any football field is the one between each helmet’s ear holes.
“Saddleback is No. 2 in the state, putting up 511 yards and [44.6] points per game,” Golden West Coach Nick Mitchell said after his team ended a four-game losing streak and earned a share of first place in the Southern Conference, in which it is now 1-0. “This win is as big as it gets.”
It was less than a year ago that the Rustlers, then 8-0 and ranked No. 1 in the state, were on the other end of an upset —a 17-14 setback to rival Orange Coast that began a season-ending three-game losing skid.
But this time, the forces at work were propelling and not slowing Golden West.
“We talked a lot about comparing two halves of a game to the two halves of the regular season [five nonconference games followed by five conference contests],” Mitchell said on the field following Saturday’s triumph. “We wanted to win the second half and come here and win [Saturday]. It doesn’t matter what happened these last five games, it was all about what we did [Saturday]. This was earned the hard way, without a doubt.”
The Rustlers’ ambition continued to be compromised by an unspectacular offense that managed just 31 yards on 36 rushing attempts and just 206 total yards against the Gauchos (5-1, 0-1).
But defense and special teams came up big.
Golden West recovered a blocked punt in the end zone to forge a 7-0 lead and Quinton Conoway booted field goals of 36 and 40 yards, the latter the game-winner as time expired.
Defensively, Golden West held Saddleback, which came in ranked second in the 37-school Southern California Football Assn. in rushing (243.6 yards per game) to 35 yards on 34 carries, including seven sacks.
Of the Gauchos’ 35 running plays, 13 produced negative yards, four more were stuffed for no gain and six others produced three or fewer yards. Further, Saddleback netted more than 12 yards on just three of its 34 passing attempts.
In addition to consistently pressuring the Gauchos’ two quarterbacks, Rustlers’ defenders were continually seen flowing from sideline to sideline as a formation of black jerseys. It was as if Rustlers were fingers on two adjoining hands, bent on letting nothing escape their grasp.
“We do everything we can to get 11 hats to the ball,” said Mitchell, who assumed defensive coordinator duties when his top defensive assistant took another job during the offseason. “It’s the same old stuff we stress every day.”
This, however, was anything but the same old stuff from the Rustlers, who meet Palomar (3-3) in the program’s first on-campus home game on Saturday at 1 p.m.
The novel home game, a special event as part of Golden West’s 50th anniversary, is the latest example of the new stuff the Rustlers showed against Saddleback.
Rutherford stands out
The UC Irvine men’s basketball team held a public preseason intra-squad scrimmage on Friday at the Bren Events Center.
Among my observations of the young Anteaters (nine freshmen, three sophomores, one junior and three seniors on Coach Russell Turner’s roster) was the impressive play of 6-foot-8, 220-pound freshman Tommy Rutherford.
Rutherford, who averaged 26.3 points and 21.8 rebounds per game at Grossmont High in El Cajon last season, displayed a strong desire, as well as an intuitive knack for finding the ball inside. He also appears to have ample offensive skills to succeed on the Division-I level.
Rutherford, an engineering major with a 4.6 grade-point average in high school, according to Grossmont Coach Frank Foggiano, turned down offers from Harvard and Cornell to play for the Anteaters.
UCI baseball news
UC Irvine baseball, ranked No. 15 in the Baseball America preseason poll, has announced its schedule.
Included among four nonconference home series is a three-game set against TCU on March 10-12.
The Horned Frogs, ranked No. 18 by Baseball America, finished third in the final 2016 writers assn. poll and have been mentioned as a possible No. 1 team in some 2017 preseason polls.
Additional UCI home nonconference series will be against Minnesota (to open the season Feb. 17-19), Portland (March 3-5) and Houston (March 24-26).
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Barry Faulkner covers colleges.
Twitter: @SteveVirgen
