SAN JOSE — In a showdown between two premier public schools for the Central Coast Section Division I championship, Los Gatos wouldn’t need last-minute heroics to vanquish Wilcox.
Instead, the Wildcats used one Jaylen Thomas touchdown after another to bury the Chargers by the middle of the second quarter in a 49-14 victory at San Jose City College on Friday night.
“Oh my goodness, we couldn’t have asked for a better championship game,” Thomas said. “The two best public schools in the section … all our alumni coming. It’s a huge rivalry, it’s unmatched for how big this game was for us.”
Los Gatos led 42-7 at halftime and enjoyed a running clock in the fourth quarter of the program’s 16th section championship. Mark Krail didn’t hold back when describing the first 24 minutes of play.
“That’s the best half of football I’ve seen in all my years of coaching,” the Los Gatos coach said after winning his third section title with the school, the others coming in 2013 and 2019.
By the halftime break, the senior receiver Thomas had run for a three-yard touchdown, caught a two-yard touchdown, returned a kickoff 82 yards to the house and hauled in a 19-yard jump ball in the corner of the end zone.
When the programs played in the regular season, Los Gatos won 24-21 in the final minute after Boxer Kopcsak-Yeung ran for the winning score, and Thomas clinched it with an interception.
Los Gatos leaned on those two players again, plus senior quarterback A.J Minyard, to jump out to an insurmountable lead.
After Thomas ran for the first touchdown of the game, Wilcox mishandled a punt to give the Wildcats the ball inside the five-yard line. Minyard, who completed 8 of 9 passes for 140 yards, made it 14-0 midway through the first quarter when he connected on a short touchdown pass to Thomas.
Wilcox fumbled the ball on its next possession, setting the table for Kopcsak-Yeung to run for a 16-yard touchdown and a 21-0 lead behind great blocks by offensive linemen Matthew Ludeman and George Charles.
“That’s the best thing ever, when your defense shows out like it did,” Kopcsak-Yeung said after running for 114 yards and three touchdowns.
Aside from Tyson Bonilla’s 65-yard touchdown run on the ensuing drive, the usually methodical Chargers could do very little right.
One drive ended when Los Gatos senior Scott Garwood jumped on a forced fumble. Another Wilcox foray deep into Wildcat territory was snuffed out of fourth down when defender Lyndon Bailey knifed into the backfield and tackled the ball-carrier for a loss.
“It’s just one of those days where everything went wrong for us,” Wilcox coach Paul Rosa said.
Thomas’s return touchdown, Kopcsak-Yeung’s 11-yard scoring run, and Minyard’s 19-yard jump ball to Thomas on Los Gatos’ next three possessions turned the second half into a formality.
It was a far cry from Los Gatos’ last two playoff games, when it outscored Archbishop Riordan 14-0 in the second half of its 28-14 victory in the first round. In the second round, Krail went for it on fourth down twice in the second half to defeat St. Ignatius 21-17.
During Friday’s rout, Wilcox’s veer ran for over 350 yards, Bonilla leading the team with 111. It was the second loss in a row for the Chargers, which had been beaten 63-27 by Serra in the Open Division title game after Wilcox had upset St. Francis 52-28 in the first round.
As the Open runner-up, Wilcox slid into the Division I title game.
“I felt that early in the week, like we had just lost our mojo a little bit, and I don’t know if it was because of that game or because of the length of the season,” Rosa said.
Regional play is up next for Los Gatos. The Wildcats are ready to play anyone, but wouldn’t be disappointed if they get a rematch with Pittsburg, one of the two teams that defeated them in the regular season.
“I hope we get them, and that would be huge,” Thomas said. “We can get our get-back.”
jLos Gatos quarterback AJ Minyard #16 celebrates with teammates after a 49-14 victory over Wilcox and the CCS Division I high school football championship at City College in San Jose, Calif., Friday, Nov. 24, 2023. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Source: www.mercurynews.com