All Ball Sports: Mustangs gallop from 0-7 to title game, UCLA, USC both lose
by Paul Teetor
The comeback kids did it again.
And now they’re in the championship game Saturday night.
Believe it or not, the Mira Costa football team that could do nothing right for nearly two months has now done everything right for the last month and a half.
The team that lost the first seven games of its season has now won its last six games – and is one victory away from a CIF Southern Section Division 6 championship.
“I’m so proud of these kids,” Coach Don Morrow said. “Their stick-to-it-ness has been great to coach.”
And this time, after a two-hour bus ride, they did it by coming back from a 14-0 deficit to a Murrieta Mesa team playing in front of their home crowd on Friday night.
The Mustangs were still trailing by 10 points at halftime after giving the ball away three times in the first half – and yet they won the game going away by a score of 34-24 in the Division 6 semifinals.
And the best news of all: Thanks to a complicated system too convoluted to detail here, the 10th seeded Mustangs will play the Division 6 Championship title game against Simi Valley at home at little old Waller Stadium.
“Simi is just like us, real scrappers,” Morrow said. “They won their semifinal game on the last play of the game.”
As they have for the last six games, the Mustangs rode the hotter-than-fish-grease arm of junior quarterback Nico De LA Cruz and his two main targets – wide receivers Reese Leonard and Charlie O’Connor – to the victory.
“Nico is going for 350, 400 yards per game, and Reese has had one of the greatest seasons of any receiver in Costa history,” Morrow said.
Costa was so dominant in the second half of the game that it outscored Murrieta Mesa by 27-7 to pump its season record up to 6-7.
De La Cruz completed 25 of 48 passes for 396 yards and three touchdowns, while Leonard hauled in eight receptions for 156 yards and two scores and O’Connor added 151 yards on nine catches.
De La Cruz went over 3,000 passing yards for the season, thanks to the three extra playoff games in which he has gotten better and better.
The key play in the Mustang’s startling comeback win came late in the third quarter when they were trailing by 17-14. Mira Costa cornerback Bradley Shearer intercepted Julian Silva’s pass attempt to give the Mustangs the ball at the Rams’ 45.
After Murrieta Mesa had apparently stopped Mira Costa’s ensuing drive, forcing a fourth-and-ten, the Mustangs converted a fake punt with O’Connor throwing a 19-yard completion to Luke Meeker to give the Mustangs a first down.
Two plays later, fullback Brady Nuthall scored on a three-yard touchdown run to give Mira Costa its first lead at 20-17.
After stopping Murrieta Mesa on a fourth-and-one from its own 29, the Mustangs increased their lead to 23-17 on a Nico De Sisto 23-yard field goal.
But the game was still far from over. The Rams then drove 80 yards in nine plays to retake the lead 24-23 on CJ Moran’s one-yard touchdown run.
From there it was all Mira Costa down the stretch.
The Mustangs answered with a touchdown immediately, going 66 yards in eight plays. They regained the lead at 31-24 with 6:02 left in the fourth quarter on a 15-yard touchdown pass from De La Cruz to Dean Staso.
Mira Costa stopped the next two Murrieta Mesa drives after O’Connor and Shearer each picked off a Silva pass to seal the victory.
There was no hint in the first half that the Mustangs were going to pull off yet another miracle win. Murrieta Mesa opened up a 14-0 lead on a 46-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter and a one-yard touchdown run midway through the second quarter.
The Mustangs cut the lead to 14-7 on a De La Cruz 21-yard touchdown pass to Leonard, but the Rams increased their lead to 17-7 on a 34-yard field goal by Alex Krishan with two seconds left in the half.
In addition to the three turnovers Murrieta Mesa recovered in the first half, the Rams recorded five sacks, two by Isaiah Casillas, and held the Mustangs to 12 yards rushing on the night.
But this was an aerial war, and Silva lost the quarterback battle to De La Cruz decisively. He completed 23 of 37 passes for 287 yards and Lindsey led the Ram receivers with seven receptions for 135 yards. But it wasn’t enough to offset the firepower of De La Cruz and his two-star receivers, Leonard and O’Connor.
Murrieta Mesa, which was trying to reach its first title game in school history, finishes the year with the same 6-7 record as the Mustangs — but they’re going home while Costa is going for a championship.
Mira Costa will have an opportunity Saturday night to complete the most amazing season in recent Mustang history and accomplish three things at once: win a CIF championship, finish with a .500 record and confirm the growing belief that this is truly a team of destiny.
“Saturday night is going to be fun,” Morrow said. “Like I said, Simi is just like us.”
UCLA loses by winning against USC
The wrong coach won the annual rivalry game between UCLA and USC.
If USC had won, it is likely the UCLA administration would have fired coach Chip Kelly, who has more than worn out his welcome with Bruin fans.
After six seasons in which his fabled Oregon pace-and-space offense never reappeared in a Bruin uniform, it seemed like everyone – fans, writers and pundits – was ready to throw dirt on his grave. His 33-33 record going into the game was nowhere close to good enough for a fan base that longs for the glory days of UCLA football, no matter how far back in the day they were.
And the pitiful, pathetic losses to Arizona and Arizona State, all by themselves should have been enough to convince Bruin Athletic Director Martin Jarmond to pull the trigger on Kelly.
Instead, Kelly was given a chance to save his job – and now he has probably cashed in his lottery ticket with the USC win.
It was second-year USC coach Lincoln Riley who was on the wrong end of the 38-20 score. Despite some serious disillusionment with his performance since starting the season 6-0, there is simply no way USC is dumping him after just two seasons.
And his prospects as an NFL coach – the smart football guys said at the start of the season he was going to leave for the pros after winning a national championship and guiding Caleb Williams to his second consecutive Heisman Trophy – are now dead on arrival.
Riley has to come back to USC next year and continue taking his $10 million salary so he can pay for his $17 million mansion in Palos Verdes Estates.
Boo freakin’ hoo.
And he’s going to have to do it without Williams. There is zero chance Williams is coming back to this mess of a team when he will probably be the first pick in the NFL draft – and Riley will have to face the brutal Big-10 schedule with the shine knocked off his team.
Despite all the pre-game hype, the game itself Saturday afternoon was a ho-hum affair. USC gave up a quick 14-0 lead to UCLA and showed no signs of being willing to scrap and fight to get back into it.
This was an embarrassment for USC and its fans. By the end of the game, you could hear the same kind of boos echoing around the Coliseum that you heard at the last few Clay Helton games. Not as loud or sustained, mind you, but still the kind of fan reaction that would have been unthinkable six weeks ago.
So now, thanks to this unexpected blowout, USC and UCLA are in similar, parallel situations: entering next season with coaches many fans want gone, without a star quarterback, and about to learn what a terrible mistake they made when they left the PAC-12 for the Big 10 – really the Big 16 – and started the domino effect that destroyed the PAC 12.
Next year, they’re going to reap what they sowed – and it should be really ugly.
Prediction: by the middle of next season, both teams’ records will be so bad that they will have only one thing to look forward to: their annual end-of-season rivalry game, which has been grandfathered into their Big 10 schedule.
Let’s hope it’s better than this year’s edition.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor. ER