Angelus League preview: Favored St. Francis High ready for new league, some new foes

After all the speculation, appeals, changes to the league in terms of schools and name, change in division and plenty of hype and expectation, the Angelus League kickoff has finally arrived.

Mission League holdovers Cathedral High, Harvard-Westlake, St. Francis and St. Paul will welcome newcomers La Salle and Salesian as the sextet vies for supremacy in a newly formed league with the ultimate hopes of claiming a CIF Southern Section Southeast Division championship.

As for whether there’s a prominent favorite, well that tag lies with the team that’s taken up the No. 1 spot in the Southeast rankings all season.

“St. Francis, hands-down,” Harvard-Westlake Coach Scott Ruggles said emphatically when asked who the league favorite was.

St. Francis has been dealing with the magnitude of expectation since the possibility of the Golden Knights moving up to the Pac-5 Division (Division I) along with Mission League heavyweights Chaminade and Gardena Serra never materialized. Thus, not only did St. Francis not find itself migrating north for the fall, it went south in most people’s eyes from the Western Division (seen by most as Division IV last season) to the Southeast (VII).

“You just traded the top two teams for schools from lower divisions that are very good,” Ruggles said of Chaminade and Serra, the previous two Western Division and Division II State champions. “You lost two greats, but I think we’ve got two very good teams.

“I think it’s still a very good league.”

Ruggles’ Wolverines are one of five teams in the league who sport winning records heading into league and one of four ranked in the division’s top 10.

In the first week’s worth of games, No. 1 St. Francis (5-0) will travel to face No. 10 Harvard-Westlake (4-1) Friday night at 7; La Salle (3-2) hosts St. Paul (3-2) at 7 Friday; and No. 7 Salesian (2-3) will host No. 4 Cathedral (5-0) on Saturday afternoon at 3 at Los Angeles Southwest College.

Much of the hype conducting the Golden Knights train comes as St. Francis is a season removed from a Western Division semifinal run, though it came with crucial players leading the way who have since graduated. Cathedral (Western Division) and La Salle (Northwest Division) had first-round playoff exits last season, while Salesian won the Northeast championship. Alas, last season and the hype train of the current campaign are all distractions St. Francis has done its best to shun since the spring.

“We don’t talk about rankings, we don’t talk about that stuff,” Golden Knights Coach Jim Bonds said. “We’re having to keep that focus on a week-to-week basis.

“We don’t talk about that stuff. We just focus on that week’s game and getting better every day.”

And the focus resides with a Harvard-Westlake squad riding a four-game winning streak after a season-opening 48-6 loss to Loyola.

“We had a tough one in the opener,” said Ruggles, whose team has scored 37 or more points in its four wins and allowed 10 or less in three of them. “We’ve gotten better each week, which is all you can ask for.

“[At] 4-1, we feel pretty good. We’re happy with where we’re headed.”

The Wolverines, who defeated the Golden Knights last time St. Francis played at Harvard-Westlake in 2012, have been led offensively by senior running back Garrett Robinson (581 yards and eight touchdowns in 85 carries).

St. Francis comes in boasting an offense that’s averaging more than 40 points a game and has scored more points (220) than any other league squad, despite having played a formidable nonleague slate of foes that includes Moorpark, Monrovia and Canyon Country Canyon.

Among a laundry list of standouts so far that have shined are senior quarterback Jeremiah Martin (1,309 yards passing, 10 touchdowns to no interceptions and six rushing scores), junior running back Areg Nazarian (819 total yards and 10 total touchdowns) and senior tight end/linebacker John Carroll (21 catches for 374 yards and four touchdowns/30 tackles).

Perhaps the most interesting game of the opening week is the Salesian-Cathedral affair, with the Mustangs making, in many eyes, their big-time debut.

“There’s no chip on our shoulder,” Salesian Coach Angelo Jackson said. “We’re just going out to play football.”

Salesian is coming off two losses, but they were to Loyola (31-6) and Bakersfield (49-6), which is the defending State Division I champion and was a game that largely came to be due to the minimized window for scheduling due to the aforementioned CIF appeals and releaguing process. Salesian began its season with a 27-3 win over Muir, which Cathedral defeated, 12-7.

“They’re gonna be battle-tested,” Bonds said. “We’re not gonna scare them after playing the likes of Bakersfield and Loyola.”

Salesian, which has four running backs who’ve rushed for 200 or more yards and six defenders with 20 or more tackles, will also be buoyed by the return of “eight guys” from injury.

“They’re all back,” said Jackson, whose 44-player roster is the smallest in the league next to Harvard-Westlake (43). “Getting everybody back helps us.”

Cathedral has blown out every opponent it’s faced other than Muir, but doesn’t own a win against a team with a .500 record. Nonetheless, the first half of the regular season has seen sophomore quarterback Andrew Tovar throw for 1,378 yards and 20 touchdowns to just four interceptions on 89 of 139 completions.

“We’re still focused now on Harvard-Westlake,” Bonds said of who he believes will be the toughest challenge to the Golden Knights winning their first league title since a Mission crown in 1997. “I still believe that going to Cathedral is gonna be a really tough matchup and I still don’t know enough about Salesian yet.”

St. Francis has three road games during its five-game league slate and they all come at the onset, with the opener at Harvard-Westlake followed by a trip to Cathedral (Oct. 17) and then a familiarly unpleasant jaunt to St. Paul (Oct. 24). The Golden Knights finally play their first Angelus League home game Halloween night before a Thursday night league finale against visiting Salesian (Nov. 6).

As for St. Paul, which has fallen in recent seasons from its days of being a league and CIF player, and La Salle, which has run roughshod in past seasons over the Del Rey League only to struggle in the playoffs, both have found success in the nonleague season.

La Salle is coming off a 42-7 win over Duarte. St. Paul began the year at 3-0, but has lost its last two by a 96-0 combined score, though its 63-player roster is second only to Cathedral (64) in the league and it still has one of the more unpleasant home fields to play, where it is 3-0 this year.

The only certainties in the new world of the Angelus League seem to be that most are looking to St. Francis as the favorite.

“Coach Bonds and those guys, it starts with them. Those guys do a great job,” Ruggles said. “[The St. Francis players] play hard; they don’t make a lot of mistakes.”

And that in a new league rife with new matchups and unknown commodities, there’s still very much the anything-can-happen element.

“St. Francis, they have a history and very good coaching,” Jackson said. “But it’s high school football, anybody can win.”

Staff predicted order of finish: 1) St. Francis 2) Cathedral 3) Harvard-Westlake 4) Salesian 5) St. Paul 6) La Salle.