College of the Sequoias will bring an 0-2 record into Saturday’s
non-conference showdown with the Gavilan College Rams on the
Giants’ home turf in Visalia.
GILROY
One team will earn its first victory of the season when the Gavilan Rams meet College of the Sequoias on Saturday at the Giants’ home turf in Visalia.
Kickoff is 1 p.m.
Despite its 0-2 mark, COS has a history of success over the past decade, and Gavilan coach John Lango assures the Giants cannot be taken lightly.
“Sequoias is the best team on our schedule,” he said this week. “They might be 0-2, but Sequoias lost to Foothill on a Hail Mary pass last week. They are a huge football team, no comparison to us. They blitz a lot and have exceptional speed on defense.”
Lango is winless in six games against the Giants since taking over as the Rams’ head coach in 2000. Gavilan’s last victory against COS was in 1997.
Gavilan, also 0-2 after a 30-28 setback to Merced last weekend, should be near full strength. However, running back and return specialist James Gaynor is out for one to two weeks with a knee strain, while linebacker Dustin Leffew, injured two weeks ago against De Anza, is still several weeks from being healthy.
“Our offense is improving,” Lango said. “We still are making some mistakes, but the offense doubled its production over the first week.
“Sequoias does a lot of blitzing, so our offense will need to pick up those blitzes if we want to be successful.”
Lango lauded the football intelligence shown by quarterback Cameron Hernandez in a second-half, 1-yard touchdown plunge against Merced.
“Cameron made that play on his own,” Lango said. “The hand-off was supposed to go to the left, but Cameron saw the linebacker move away so he took it himself and scored easily.”
While the Rams were able to convert from a yard out, the Gavilan defense recorded its third goal-line stand of the season during the first quarter of the Merced game.
“We will need to be very solid against COS,” Lango said. “While our offense is improving, we probably didn’t tackle and have good pursuit of the football as well against Merced. College of the Sequoias has a good quarterback (Phillip Brandt), two elusive running backs (Eric Johnson, Brant Botill) and a talented wideout (Jeremy Butler).”
Gavilan will host the Modesto Pirates at 1 p.m. on Oct. 2 at Garcia-Elder Sports Complex to complete the home portion of the pre-Coast Conference schedule.
