Team loses to powerful Palma, but hopes to pick up Friday
win
The regular season doesn’t end for two more weeks but the San
Benito High football team will be fighting for its playoff life
tonight in Salinas when they take on the Trojans of Alisal
High.
Last week, the Balers nearly pulled off an upset win at home
over Tri County Athletic League leader Palma before losing 17-14 to
the Chieftains in a game that could have gone either way.
Team loses to powerful Palma, but hopes to pick up Friday win
The regular season doesn’t end for two more weeks but the San Benito High football team will be fighting for its playoff life tonight in Salinas when they take on the Trojans of Alisal High.
Last week, the Balers nearly pulled off an upset win at home over Tri County Athletic League leader Palma before losing 17-14 to the Chieftains in a game that could have gone either way.
San Benito High played sound football for four quarters in that contest but unfortunately coming close only counts in horseshoes, and the loss slipped the struggling Balers to 2-5 for the season and 1-2 in league play.
The good news is that if they run the table and win tonight, next week at Salinas High School and then the following week at home in the Prune Bowl against Gilroy High, San Benito would finish the season with a 4-2 record in league play and 5-5 overall – a record that should catch the eye of the Central Coast Section officials enough to grant the Balers an at-large berth for the post season playoffs.
“We’ve got to come away with a victory and get back in the race here, and even up our record at 2-2,” said San Benito High coach Chris Cameron. “We need to build on what we got going last week and pull out a victory. We haven’t played a complete football game yet – but we were a lot closer last week.”
And this week, even though the game is on the road, the Balers are going up against a squad that they match up much better against – from both a defensive and offensive standpoint.
“We looked at a lot of film on them,” Cameron said. “This is a team we can play with. They don’t bring anything super special. This is a team that is not as good as the team we played against last week, and we nearly went out there and beat them. Alisal does have one player that they use all over – he plays quarterback and wide receiver too. So we’ll be watching him.”
The player Cameron was referring to is 6-foot-4 senior QB/WR David Alejo, who has thrown for 212 yards this season and done 4 touchdown passes.
Heading into the game Alisal is 3-4 overall and 1-2 in league. The Trojans are coming off a 49-21 loss to Gilroy last week.
“Hollister is a team with high expectations and high standards,” Alisal coach Sunil Smith said. “We know that sooner or later they are going to right the ship. I know the type of coach that Chris Cameron is and the coaching staff that he has there. He’ll have his team ready to play.”
When asked what Smith’s biggest concern was heading into tonight’s showdown he said that it was the San Benito High program itself, which has built a tradition of winning.
“We’re going to need to run a lot of misdirection plays and play action stuff. That’s what we do in a Wing-T offense,” Smith said. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to run the ball well too.”
In addition to having an athletic quarterback, the Trojans will look to jump-start the offense with Jesus Romero, a junior running back with more than 500 rushing yards and a pair of touchdowns this season. When Romero isn’t being handed the ball look for the Baler defense to be given a heavy dose of running back Armando Enriquez and fullback Jose Tapia. This year Enriquez leads the team in touchdowns with 6 while Tapia has run for nearly 150 yards.
In last week’s loss to Palma the Baler special teams played well but one concern that still remains is the team’s ability to put points on the board early and often.
“We have not scored first in a single game that we’ve played this season,” Cameron said. “We are always playing from behind. I’d like to score first this week and not have to play catch up.”
The Balers will look to achieve that objective by mixing things up on offense and handing the ball off to running backs Abel Jacquez, Mitchell Cook, Anthony Padilla and Nick Acosta. This season the four running backs have combined for more than 1,000 rushing yards and four touchdowns.
Baler quarterback Ronnie Fhurong is also a threat to run. This season Fhurong has scored two rushing touchdowns and run for more than 200 yards. In last week’s loss to the Chieftains, Fhurong threw for 122 yards and ran for another 52, including an 8-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter, which cut Palma’s lead to 17-7 at the time.
The other Baler to score last week was Cook, who caught a 5-yard touchdown toss from Fhurong at the 1:44 mark of the game. Cook also ran for 50 yards on eight carries in the losing effort.
“I’d like to see us finally get that perfect game this week,” Cameron said. “We gave a really good football team all that it could handle last week. This week I want to see us take the next step.”
Kickoff is at 7:30 p.m.
