REDWOOD CITY – Sacred Heart Prep entered the postseason with a losing record.
After steamrolling its way to a Central Coast Section Division IV championship by outscoring its three opponents by nearly 100 points, SHP still finds itself one win shy of a .500 record.
Friday night’s 51-28 victory at Sequoia High against top-seeded Homestead sealed the sixth CCS title in eight tries for the No. 3 seed Gators, who advanced to the NorCal Regional playoffs for a third time in school history.
SHP (6-7) can even finish with a winning record if it claims a CIF state title.
“We’re getting there,” SHP coach Mark Grieb said. “We just gotta get one more. That’s what I keep telling our guys, ‘Just gotta get to .500.’
“I just think of this team and their resilience, it’s hard to lose seven games in the regular season and still have confidence and still come out and play really well, especially when things get kind of tough.”
Not many outside the locker room, though, expected the Gators to at the very least double their regular-season win total during an unlikely postseason run.
“I just want to say one thing, we definitely belong in the playoffs,” SHP senior John Adrian Dioli said. “We scored a bunch of points in these three games. You could say we’re blowing teams out. We just want more. We’re ready to go, we’re fired up.”
Homestead (7-6) traded punches with SHP in a back-and-forth first half.
Mustangs quarterback Charlie Castaneda crossed the goal line on a pair of short runs, then slung a 46-yard bomb to Derek Sheerer with 1:17 left in the second quarter for a short-lived lead.
Gators QB Jack Herrell engineered a seven-play, 65-yard drive to go into intermission ahead 22-20 – a 3-yard lob to Zach Freire off a play-action fake as the final touch.
“I thought that drive was big because they had so much momentum,” Grieb said. “For us to get the ball and just essentially go right down the field and score and then leave eight seconds on the clock, you couldn’t have written it any better than that.”
Turnovers turned the tide throughout, including a first-half fumble forced by Anthony Noto inside the red zone that Mat Buecher recovered. Two plays later, Andrew Latu turned it into one of his two rushing scores.
In the fourth quarter, Aseli Fangupo – a freshman two-way lineman – ripped away a fumble and stiff-armed his way into the red zone.
That set up a 20-yard touchdown run by Luis Mendoza, who also found the end zone from 17 and 2 yards out.
Immediately after the ensuing kickoff, linebacker Luke De Grosz capped the scoring with a 41-yard pick-six.
“I know the score kind of looked lopsided, but I thought it was a lot closer than that,” said Grieb, who praised Homestead’s effort and toughness.
The Mustangs relied on the lateral quickness of Evan Blandini on multiple sweeps, who ran for 107 yards on 14 carries, including a 6-yard TD in the second half.
But SHP was more consistent on the ground behind a bevy of backs, amassing 259 yards on 49 carries. Mendoza was the top option with 17 carries for 124 yards.
Paving the way was Dioli as the center and only senior on the offensive line. Left tackle RJ Stephens, left guard Tyler Wong and right guard Mason Chetcuti are all juniors, with Fangupo at right tackle.
“We can put anyone in there and it’s guaranteed five yards,” Dioli said of the running-back-by-committee approach. “Those guys are great, those guys are the workhorses. Latu and Luis, they just grind during practice, but gotta give credit to our o-line tonight. I think we did a great job.”
The bad news for the Gators is the loss of Freire to a left-leg injury in the fourth quarter.
The explosive and versatile senior tossed a 47-yard pass on a trick play, caught three balls for 29 yards and had six carries for 44 yards, including a 25-yard reverse.
But he was helped off the field after a facemask penalty and left the stadium in an ambulance as his teammates celebrated a CCS title.
“He does a lot, so it’s tough,” Grieb said.
