Los Alamitos Rises to Occasion Against Wilson
OK, Los Alamitos and Esperanza, the preliminaries are complete.
Next week’s Sunset League opener between the county’s top two teams should be one of the season’s highlights as both will enter Friday’s game with 5-0 records.
The No. 1 Griffins kept up their end Friday night by blowing past host Long Beach Wilson, 55-14, before an estimated 2,500 spectators. Esperanza had defeated Bloomington, 49-32, Thursday.
Los Alamitos will give Esperanza’s defense something to think about. It’s first-string offense scored touchdowns on all seven of its first-half possessions against Wilson to take a 48-0 lead. It added a touchdown on its first possession of the second half, then Coach John Barnes began substituting freely.
Quarterback Ryan Hanson riddled the Bruins for 321 passing yards and five touchdowns. Three went to Ryan Godfrey, who had five receptions for 124 yards, and the other two to Keenan Howry, who had four receptions for 90 yards.
“Their defense kept giving us the flanker screens and the slants,” said Hanson, who threw for 203 yards and three touchdowns in the first quarter. “We kept waiting for them to adjust, but they never did.”
The Griffins did not neglect their running game. Josiah Doby had 111 yards and two touchdowns in 13 carries.
“I don’t see how we could play much better than we did in the first half,” Barnes said.
Wilson (2-3), which rolled up more than 500 yards and scored 64 points last week against Edison, could not make its wing-T attack work against Los Alamitos. The Bruins’ only touchdowns came after the Griffins were ahead 55-0 and Barnes had his reserves on the field.
The game nearly started out disastrously for the Griffins when they were slow to react to the opening kickoff and Wilson recovered at the Los Alamitos 22. The Bruins were stopped in four plays.
Los Alamitos took over at its 19. And Hanson began dissecting the Wilson defense immediately.
In the first quarter he threw for three touchdowns--55 yards to Godfrey, 34 yards to Howry, and to Godfrey again for 15 yards.
There was no letup in the second quarter. Doby had two 23-yard touchdown runs, Hanson threw a 10-yard touchdown pass to Howry, and would score himself on a one-yard run with 22 seconds left in the half.
Wilson, meanwhile, was finding scoring opportunities scarce. The Bruins’ best chance came in the scond quarter, when running back Randy Gaither, who finished with 107 yards, broke free for a 50-yard run to the Griffins’ 20-yard line.
The Bruins took the ball to the Los Alamitos three, but Omar Issa lost seven yards on a third down option pitch. Then Austin Guyness intercepted David Battle’s fourth-down pass in the end zone.