The San Benito High football team piled up 212 yards on the ground, Austin Cascio returned an interception 40 yards for a touchdown and Andrew Sotelo returned a punt 72 yards for a score.
The Haybalers scored seven touchdowns to make it 48-7 … at halftime.
It was that kind of a game for San Benito, which rolled to an impressive 62-21 win over visiting Independence-San Jose in a Central Coast Section Division I playoff opener on Friday night. The No. 4 seed Balers (6-5) advance to a semifinal game against top seed Alvarez next week.
“You come into this thinking it’s going to be a fight to the finish, and all of a sudden you’re up 35-0 (early in the second quarter),” Balers coach Chris Cameron said. “That’s what stood out in this game. We jumped on them.”
As a result, San Benito never let the No. 5 seed 76ers (5-6) get back into the contest. The Balers entered the game having scored just nine points in the first quarter all season.
On Friday, they more than tripled that output by putting up 28 points. It took just one quarter to show why San Benito is a legitimate threat to repeat as Division I champions, as it excelled in every phase of the game en route to a dominating victory.
The Balers’ offensive linemen were exploding off the ball, creating canyon-sized holes for running backs like Zak Hicks, who rushed for a career-high 170 yards on 19 carries, including touchdown runs of 4, 33 and 4 yards.
Fullback Damian Botelho added 83 yards on 12 carries, and quarterback David Stanton had an 18-yard TD run to go along with a 71-yard touchdown pass to Cody Freitas to make it 48-7 with 1:11 left until halftime.
San Benito converted five Independence turnovers into 21 points, and it scored with such swiftness and ease early on the 76ers didn’t know what hit them.
“We wanted to come out and make a statement,” said Balers center Caleb Menez, who helped key a rushing attack that finished with 222 yards. “It feels almost the same as last year. We’re playing our best when it counts the most. We’re sniffing out that championship ring right now.”
Even though the Balers were coming off a 14-0 loss to Palma last week, it actually jump-started their playoff run.
“We got after Palma,” Cameron said. “Any time you can do that against that type of team, you know you’ve got something. And all the tough non-league opponents we scheduled was to prepare us for the playoffs.”
The big plays from Cascio and Sotelo — unheralded yet solid players — were a thing of beauty, as both players broke tackles and juked defenders en route to the end zone.
On his 72-yard punt return for a TD, Sotelo actually went helmet to helmet with an Independence player at midfield — the noise from the collision reverberating for everyone in the stadium to hear — which actually stalled his progress for a split second.
Sotelo then went down the right sideline before cutting back to the middle of the field to finish off one of San Benito’s most electrifying plays of the season.
