Vikings wrap football season with playoff loss
LOS BANOS — It wasn’t the way Ben Scott and the Vanden High football team wanted to go out, but host Los Banos had other plans for the Vikings in the Sac-Joaquin Section Division III playoff opener Friday night.
No. 13 Vanden (7-4) fell 56-18 on a muddy but rainless night that saw surprisingly few mistakes by either team.
Scott, already the city’s all-time leading passer, had one more record to grab before wrapping his impressive high school career, and he did that by halftime, racking up 119 yards in the first half to pass Fairfield’s Tra’Mayne Bondurant (2009) for the single-season record.
Scott finished with 286 yards on 24 of 41 passing with one interception and three touchdown passes. That gave him 2,804 yards on the season.
For Scott, Friday also marked a kind of homecoming as he spent three years living in Los Banos from 2000-02.
“This is where football started for me,” he said. “I really didn’t think I’d get to play here again.”
Even if it was a blowout loss, Scott and coach LeVon Haynes weren’t hanging their heads.
“We came out sluggish, just a little,” said Haynes. “We made some mistakes and we didn’t capitalize on some others. (Third-seeded) Los Banos is a very good football team. They played us very, very well.”
Haynes was effusive in his praise for Scott’s efforts over the last three years.
“It’s been a pleasure and an honor to coach that young man right there,” he said.
After taking a quarter to get their feet under them, the Vikings trailed 14-0 on a pair of rushing TDs by Tigers running back James Sams.
Sams ran roughshod over the Vanden defense for most of the night, finishing with 232 yards on 33 carries with five touchdowns.
The first quarter ended with Vanden driving deep into Los Banos territory, and four plays into the second quarter, Scott hit J.J. Hong for a 58-yard scoring bomb to make it 14-6 after the conversion kick missed.
On the ensuing kickoff, the Vikings’ Dion Williams dashed in and scooped up the squib kick onside to give Vanden a first down and the Los Banos 35.
Six plays later, on first-and-10 from the 14, Scott rolled out right and dodging pressure he found Christian Basden on his knees in the end zone to get within 14-12.
It looked like the Vikings might take over the game when los banos’ Daeton West fumbled the kickoff and Vanden recovered, but a quick four-and-out sent the momentum back across the field, and the Vikings never recovered.
Los Banos added three unanswered TDs to take a 36-12 lead into the break.
A defensive battle emerged in the third with big stops on both sides before Sams broke through for a 70-yard scoring run that put the Tigers up 43-12.
The Vikings responded to start the fourth when Scott connected with Cody Holbein for a 6-yard touchdown. The failed 2-point pass attempt left it 43-18 with 11:42 to play.
The Tigers added another score on a 4-yard run by Garrett Mentz, and with 2:11 to play Adrian Rivas picked off a Scott pass at his own 31 and raced all the way to pay dirt for the final score of the game.
Reach Mike Corpos at 427-6979, or mcorpos@dailyrepublic.net.
Short URL: http://www.dailyrepublic.com/?p=107612
Posted by Mike Corpos
on Nov 11 2011.
Filed under High school, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
Fire the coach they got blew out by a better team, fire the coach because Peabody road is only two lanes, fire the coach because he gained to much weight fire the coach because, because,because. Sounds like the kooks at Rod state penn. Why don’t the same crap spew from the mouths of these parents because they are rational they see that sometimes you play better teams. Except the preseason see we play all soft teams in preseason and then do average in league and get smacked in the first round. So why no crying for change here?