St. Francis football stressing success, not scenarios

Crazy a notion as it may be, St. Francis High’s football team still has a chance to repeat as Angelus League champion entering the final week of the regular season.

But winning a league title might well be the last thing the Golden Knights want.

For St. Francis to claim the championship, it would have to defeat La Salle when the teams face off at La Salle High on Friday at 7 p.m., while St. Paul would need to upend Cathedral and Salesian would have to defeat Harvard-Westlake, thereby creating a massive five-way logjam for the league title with a quintet of teams at 3-2.

Thereafter, a series of coin flips, tiebreakers and perhaps games of rock, paper, scissors would take place to decide CIF Southern Section Southeast Division seeding, as well as the one and possibly two teams that would be left out of the playoffs.

As far as St. Francis Coach Jim Bonds is concerned, there’s no point in worrying about possible scenarios and tiebreakers, however.

“That was the message [Saturday], when we finished watching films,” St. Francis Coach Jim Bonds said. “There’s a million scenarios that can happen, but nothing good can happen if we don’t finish the season on the winning end.”

St. Francis (6-3, 2-2 in league), ranked sixth in the division, takes on La Salle (4-5, 0-4), which lost to the Golden Knights, the reigning league champion, by a 60-0 margin last season. Across the league, No. 4 Cathedral (8-1, 3-1) will host St. Paul (5-4, 2-2) and Salesian (5-4, 2-2) will host No. 10 Harvard-Westlake (6-3, 3-1). The league is granted three automatic playoff entries and the division only offers one at-large entrant, though it was Salesian last year and there’s a good possibility the No. 4 team out of the league would garner an at-large berth.

“We know the league is all messed up with everybody beating up each other, but we can’t worry about that,” said St. Francis defensive end Sean Davitt, who has 54 tackles and 15 sacks. “We don’t want to not take this game seriously and then lose and fall short of the playoffs.”

St. Francis began the season at 4-0 until a 34-0 defeat against Calabasas to end nonleague play began a three-game losing streak.

“I think we were a little shellshocked after that loss,” Bonds said.

The next two losses were a double-overtime setback against Salesian and then a defeat on a hail Mary against Harvard-Westlake. St. Francis rebounded with an upset of Salesian and a defeat of St. Paul.

“We’ve definitely stepped up our game,” Davitt said.

St. Francis has also welcomed back standout offensive tackle Cade Mockary and running back Areg Nazarian, who has missed the majority of the last four games, could return. Meanwhile, receiver Jasher Foster has blossomed into a huge offensive threat and the Davitt-led defense has been keying victories.

“We’re just playing better team football,” Bonds said. “I think we have a better sense of who we are and what we’re trying to do.”

Plenty of scenarios and questions still abound with titles and playoff berths up for grabs as Friday approaches in an Angelus League that is far from the established pecking order of last season when St. Francis went undefeated and won every league game by double-digits. Of course, looking in the rear-view mirror and contemplating what-ifs are not something the Golden Knights can afford to do now.

“It’s pretty good parity in the league; I guess that makes it fun, but you look back at the Harvard and Salesian games and think, we could be 8-1,” Bonds said. “But we have to move forward and just take care of what we can do.”