Taft Gives Chatsworth the Slip

Marquis Brignac rushed for 165 yards and scored three touchdowns to lift Taft High, to a 27-25 victory over Chatsworth on Friday night in a Northwest Valley Conference game.

Taft (7-1, 5-0 in league play) struggled on offense but Brignac was able to break several big runs, including a 70-yard touchdown that gave the Toreadors a 27-18 lead with 10:48 left in the third quarter. He also scored on runs of 21 and 32 yards.

Taft’s offense disappeared from that point, allowing Chatsworth to crawl back into the game.

Chatsworth scored on a one-yard run by Eric Harris with 7:07 left to play and had two opportunities to take the lead.

After driving Chatsworth to the Taft 32, Matt Cassel threw an incomplete pass on fourth down.

With just over a minute remaining, Cassel fumbled at midfield on a fourth-down scramble.

“Our kids were able to overcome a lot of adversity tonight,” Coach Troy Starr of Taft said. “A lot of things went wrong out there and we didn’t play particularly well.”

Cassel passed for 219 yards but completed just 18 of 38 passes with an interception.

Chatsworth fumbled three times.

Chatsworth took a 10-0 lead on a three-yard touchdown run by Harris and a 28-yard field goal by Reggie Lee.

Brignac’s two-yard touchdown run got Taft back into the game after Dionte Hall intercepted a pass by Cassel.