Local coaches rebound from rough week
SOUTHEAST GLENDALE — The Glendale YMCA Quarterback Club, in its 69th year, meets Tuesdays at the Elk’s Lodge. The following are odds and ends from the sixth meeting of the year.
PACIFIC COACHES
DISSECT LOSSES
It was a rough week for the three Pacific League club-member teams, as Crescenta Valley High, Glendale and Hoover combined to go 0-3 in league play.
Falcons Coach Paul Schilling was left scratching his head after his team rolled up 567 yards of total offense, yet still came away with its first loss of the league season, 53-42, at Pasadena on Friday.
“Obviously, we didn’t play very well on defense,” Schilling said.
Marro Lee (196 yards) and William Wang (108 yards) both topped 100 yards on the ground for Crescenta Valley (4-2, 2-1 in league), but the true offensive star of the game turned out to be the Bulldogs’ dynamic quarterback Brandon Cox, who totaled 350 all-purpose yards of his own and accounted for six touchdowns.
“He can run, he can throw, he’s left-handed, he’s got a nice little touch,” Schilling said of Cox. “We said, ‘Let’s not give him any time to throw the ball.’ Well, it didn’t work.
“We tried to go after him and he still got rid of the ball, threw those little passes and threw over our head and he ran. He’s a phenomenal player and every team that plays them from now on will just try to game plan just around him.”
Glendale (1-5) fell to 0-3 in league with a 70-34 loss to league front-runner Burroughs on Thursday, but Nitros Coach Alan Eberhart praised several good plays by his team, including a diving catch in the end zone by Alex Yoon and a 94-yard kickoff return by Michael Davis.
“Improvement’s great, but the game still is about winning,” said Eberhart, whose team’s last win came over Hoover in the season opener on Sept. 3. “It’s frustrating because we’ve come so far and the result keeps being the same.”
Hoover Coach Andrew Policky could empathize with the Nitros’ frustration, and then some, as the Tornadoes fell to 0-6 with Friday’s 42-0 defeat to Muir and are yet to score in three weeks of league play.
“Our frustration level is way, way above the frustration level [of Glendale],” Policky said. “We can’t score at all.”
KNIGHTS BRING UP
SUPER SOPHS.
St. Francis Coach Jim Bonds announced that several members of the program’s sophomore team will be brought up to the varsity level for the team’s upcoming three-game swing of tough Mission League games.
Among the most prominent call-ups, Joe Mudie, a starting tailback/cornerback from the sophomore squad, actually made his varsity debut in last week’s league-opening 23-20 win over Harvard-Westlake, carrying the ball five times and catching three passes for a total of 50 yards.
Also making the jump is sophomore quarterback Ty Gangi, giving the Golden Knights some depth behind starter Jared Lebowitz.
“Ty Gangi is quite a football player, he’s done a great job with our JV team and it’s nice to have that insurance with us,” Bonds said. “We’ve been kind of rolling the dice at the quarterback position all season because I wanted to give Ty experience playing on the JV team, but he’s been our No. 2 guy all along.”
PAUS LOOKS BACK
ON BRUIN YEARS
Tuesday’s meeting was crowded with former UCLA quarterbacks, as Bonds, Village Christian Coach Jay Schroeder and guest speaker Cory Paus were all rubbing elbows on the dais.
Paus led the Bruins’ offense for the better part of four seasons from 1999-2002, passing for 6,740 yards and 41 touchdowns after being the first athlete from Lincoln Way High in the suburbs of Chicago to received a Division I athletic scholarship.
Paus’ Bruins career highlights included a 2000 Sun Bowl appearance against Wisconsin, where he led the Bruins to 17 first-half points before suffering a fractured left collarbone on the final play of the half. But most vividly he seemed to remember the clashes with archrival USC.
In his sophomore season facing the Trojans at the Rose Bowl, Paus engineered what he thought might be a game-wining drive capped by his own rushing touchdown with under a minute left. But Carson Palmer led the Trojans down the field to beat the Bruins on a field goal.
“That was the closest I ever came to beating USC,” Paus said. “I unfortunately inherited an eight-game winning streak against USC, but if anybody knows anything about statistics, it’s difficult to keep that going.
“That was the most heartbreaking loss of my college career.”