The opening 12 minutes is starting to become the Balers best quarter of football. For the third-consecutive week the San Benito football team jumped on a Monterey Bay League opponent and came away with an easy victory.
This time, San Benito (5-4 overall, 3-2 in the MBL) scored 30 points in the opening quarter to run away with a 43-13 victory over Alvarez in Salinas on Friday.
Once the points starting coming for San Benito in the first quarter, Alvarez could do nothing to stop the rolling Balers. In a seven-play span in the game’s first five minutes, San Benito scored in all three phases of the game – offense, defense and special teams – to put the game out of reach.
“That whole thing set the pace of the game,” head coach Chris Cameron said. “It pretty much decided the game right there. The game was over right away. We only ran like two plays.”
The Balers needed only two plays because of a strong defensive effort that limited Alvarez to negative 5 yards over the first quarter of play. San Benito set the tone early, with two sacks on Alvarez’s first possession, but San Benito didn’t take control of the game until the Eagles’ aggressiveness backfired deep in its own territory.
The Eagles tried to catch San Benito off guard on the game’s first drive, drawing up a fake punt on fourth and 18 from the 8-yard line. But after an incompletion, San Benito needed only two runs from Damien Botelho to take the lead at 7-0.
On Alvarez’s next play, pressure from John Canes, who finished with two sacks, forced a deflected pass that fell into the hands of Dominic Padilla. The cornerback ran the next 25 yards untouched to give San Benito a 14-0 lead.
Padilla wasn’t even supposed to be in the area for the interception, but it worked out, he said.
“The funny thing was I didn’t do my job and I wasn’t happy with it,” he said. “But then I was, and I got the pick-six. I came up and I caught it and I ran it into the endzone.”
The Balers weren’t done, though. After the defense forced another three-and-out Alvarez drive, Cody Cameron put the game out of reach with a 75-yard punt return for a touchdown. Driven back on the long punt, Cameron avoided two Eagles and bounced the return to the left sideline, where he ran the rest of the way untouched.
“When I saw everything I ran up the middle,” he said. “And we had great blocking and great execution by the punt return team. I turned to the left and followed by blocks and sprung it on the left side. It was a great blocking by our defense.”
The Balers added a safety – on a bad snap during a Alvarez punt – and one more touchdown as time expired in the first quarter on a 67-yard drive that used up nearly five minutes of the clock. Botelho, who ran for 18 yards and two scores on three touches, scored from six yards out for the 21-0 lead.
San Benito’s offense never really got going, gaining only 241 yards in the win, but because of the strong defensive effort they never really needed to.
A 12-yard run by Paris Edwards, who ran for a team-high 45 yards on four carries, in the second quarter extended the Balers lead to 36-0 before Alvarez scored its only points of the first half with less than 20 second remaining.
For the third straight game, the Baler put in their second string to play out the rest of the contest, as each team scored once in the second half.
Quarterback David Stanton tossed only three passes, completing two for 18 yards. Sophomore Austin Cascio – Santon’s backup – played well in relief, throwing 3-for-5 for 54 yards. On the ground, Cascio ran for 23 yards on eight carries.
The victory continues the Balers good play entering the season’s biggest game against Palma next Friday. San Benito hopes the momentum continues to build as they search for a berth in the Central Coast Section playoffs.
“I think we kind of gelled together,” Cody Cameron said. “The chemistry is really there. After that Monterey loss we put our heads down and said ‘hey we need to start winning some ball games.’ We just had great weeks of practice. Everyone has been there so it’s been the same group of guys. The chemistry is there and we’ve been feeding off of each other’s energy. We are playing pretty well.”
That winning belief should only benefit them against Palma, which wrapped up the league championship on Friday, Chris Cameron said.
“Our moral is up and that’s real important,” he said. “The mood amongst the guys is a whole lot better than it was after the Monterey and Salinas games. That’s gigantic. Now we know what it’s like to win and what it’s like to go in. We still have a long ways to go. But it’s a lot better than going in Palma with a couple of losses.”
The Balers have done a lot more than that, during the last three weeks, San Benito has outscored its opponents 175-27.
