Daily Breeze football: Torrance reaches first CIF-SS final; Serra, Carson lose in semifinals

Here are some of the Daily Breeze’s stories from the football semifinals on Friday, Nov. 17.

Torrance football makes history by advancing to first CIF-SS final

By Tony Ciniglio, Correspondent 

TORRANCE – It took one final push. A big burst of energy. A major release of adrenaline.

The Torrance defenders swarmed Hemet quarterback Draven Lopez, pressured him into a harmless pass that fell incomplete on fourth down and began celebrating Torrance’s first trip to a CIF Southern Section football final.

All that was left was for Torrance to run out the final 1 minute, 1 second for a hard-fought 10-7 victory over Hemet Friday night at Zamperini Stadium, advancing to the Division 10 final at West Covina next Friday or Saturday.

It was the ultimate victory formation.

“That was the best feeling,” Torrance receiver/linebacker Jake Silverman said. “There was a lot of excitement in that moment. We made a couple of mistakes, but it was all about heart.”

Just a year removed from a 2-8 season, Torrance parlayed a third-place Pioneer League finish into its first semifinal appearance since the Tyrone Taylor-led 2011 squad made the program’s only other semifinal trip.

“I’m so proud of these dudes,” Torrance third-year coach Raymond Carter said. “You have no idea how hard they have been working. We got tested early, but it made us closer and brought the brotherhood tighter, and that was great to see.”

Torrance (9-4) embraced the magnitude of the moment as Silverman and Ryan Young made the pivotal offensive plays and the defense found a way to finally slow down Hemet running back Daniel Mendoza, who accounted for 172 total yards.

“For us, it was about making history,” Torrance defensive back Anthony Bushmeyer said. “Today is a great day to be a Tartar. I’m grateful to be a captain for this team. It’s our first CIF final, and we are aiming for our first banner. That’s the goal.”

It was an inspired performance by Young, who has been hobbled by a pair of hamstring injuries for the past month.

Young rushed for 129 yards on 18 carries, including the decisive 52-yard scoring run at the 4:49 mark in the third quarter.

“I might be a nine in terms of pain tomorrow morning, but that play helped me ignore the pain,” Young said. “I was zoned out – I was going wherever I wanted to go. I felt a little pull on my right hamstring, but I was not going down at the 5.”

Young credited the Torrance training staff for helping him stay on his feet and preparing him to shake off his injury.

“I do not want to go the doctor because I don’t want them to send me out,” Young said.

Torrance jumped ahead 3-0 on a 33-yard field goal by Christopher Ramirez with 2:24 left in the second quarter, but Inland Valley League champion Hemet (9-4) took a 7-3 halftime lead after a 2-yard scoring run by Mendoza (104 yards, 20 carries) with 22 seconds left in the first half.

It took an unlikely hero to turn the tables for Torrance.

Freshman Vaughn Reinhert, pulled up to the varsity team for the playoffs, made a game-changing play with a sliding interception to thwart Hemet’s time-consuming opening drive to start the second half.

Four plays later, Young broke free for his 52-yard scoring run.

“I saw the quarterback scrambling and rolling out and he lobbed it up there. I saw it in the air, and I knew that ball was mine,” Reinhert said. “It was crazy. Once I got that, our crowd was hyped and our sideline was hyped, and I knew we were going to score after that.”

Silverman finished with eight catches for 89 yards. He had a pair of hard-nosed catches for 10 and 13 yards on third down to keep Torrance’s late drive going in the fourth quarter and shorten Hemet’s comeback window.

“When you are in the zone, you just block out everything, and you only worry about getting that first down,” Silverman said.

Carter called it a special moment for the program and the community and was especially happy for assistant coaches Bryant Henson and Charlie Deutsch who had played football for Torrance.

“Our group of kids have been talking about playing 14 weeks all year, and now they get that opportunity,” Carter said. “I told the guys the hungriest team was going to win, and tonight that was us.”

Serra’s rally comes up short in CIF-SS Division 2 semifinal against Servite

By Damian Calhou, Staff Writer

GARDENA – Despite all that went bad throughout the first three quarters, the Serra football team had a chance in the fourth quarter of Friday’s CIF-Southern Section Division 2 semifinal game.

The Cavaliers, who trailed Servite by 22 points in the fourth quarter, scored a pair of touchdowns, got a couple of defensive stops and a turnover and all of a sudden, were within one score and on the verge of a memorable comeback.

Unfortunately, that’s where things would eventually end.

An extra point hit the upright,  and after an interception by Noa Keohuloa, quarterback Jimmy Butler, who appeared to have a safe path toward the end zone, was sandwiched by a pair of Servite defenders, who knocked the ball loose, ending the threat.

In the end, it all added up to a 28-20 defeat, ending Serra’s (9-4) season.

“We had a chance to tie it up at the end, but the ball gets knocked out and that was it,” Serra coach Scott Altenberg said. “Our defense really stepped up in the second half, played really well.

“First half, things were hard without Zach (Zacharyus Williams) and Cin (Cincere Rhaney), but we then figured it out, threw it a little more … had an opportunity. … When you give your team a chance to win in the end, that’s all you can do. With the ball, going in … ball pops out, just bad luck. … It was a week of bad luck.”

After the fumble Servite, was pinned back on its own 1-yard line, but would later convert a gutsy fourth-and-2 from the 10 to run out the clock.

Serra’s “week of bad luck” started after last week’s quarterfinal win against Los Alamitos.

The physical game knocked Williams (shoulder) and Rhaney (knee) out for this week, leaving the offense shorthanded. Entering the semifinal, Serra had scored at least 38 points in five of its last six games. Rhaney was closing in on a 2,000-yard rushing season, Williams was approaching 1,000 yards receiving and the duo combined had 39 touchdowns.

In the first half, Serra scored on a 5-yard run by Butler to make it 10-6. However, Servite closed the first half with a touchdown and a field goal to take a 21-6 lead into halftime.

Serra had possession of the ball to start the second half, but the offense remained stuck, throwing an interception and turning the ball over on downs.

The Serra offense didn’t get on track until the fourth quarter. Camron Harris-Wilcott capped a 63-yard drive with a 9-yard touchdown and after forcing a punt, the offense scored again, this time on Butler’s 29-yard touchdown to CJ McBean to make it 28-20. The missed extra point followed with 5:16 left.

Now, with the sideline and crowd alive, the Serra defense forced Servite quarterback Leo Hannan into a rushed throw on third-and-5, which Keohuloa intercepted and returned to the 15.

On Serra’s next play, the Servite defense forced the fumble, which eventually ended Serra’s dreams of a comeback.

“I feel real proud of the way the guys battled,” Altenberg said. “They played real hard and you can’t discount that.

“Two O-lineman (Elijah Henderson and Reggie Terry) who were banged up and Bam (Iakopo Tovio), who was really banged up, they toughed it through the whole game. We just got unlucky in the end. We have seven guys who are going to play college football, who were unavailable for this game and that’s a big amount.”

Carson unable to keep up with Birmingham in City Open Division semifinal

By Scott French, Correspondent

LAKE BALBOA — Carson faced the stiffest of tests with an opportunity to return to a CIF L.A. City Section football title game for the first time in nine years, but it was over, more or less, as soon as it begun.

Peyton Waters, the odds-on favorite to repeat as the City’s player of the year, returned Friday night’s opening kickoff 92 yards for a touchdown and three-time defending Open Division champion Birmingham scored on three successive second-quarter possessions to put the visiting Colts away, romping to a 35-6 triumph.

The top-seeded Patriots (10-2) claimed their 11th consecutive City playoff victory, their seventh in a row over Marine League foes, to set up a rematch with No. 2 Garfield (11-1) — a 42-6 winner over Gardena — in next Saturday’s title game at L.A. Valley College. Birmingham won last year’s championship meeting, 49-13.

“They flat-out played better than us,” Carson do-everything star Jerry Misaalefua said through tears as the Patriots celebrated. “They kicked our butts. We had a game plan, they showed up. Some days you got good days, some days you got off days, and today was an off day.”

Misaalefua, who came in with more than 1,500 yards rushing, played primarily out of wildcat at quarterback with starter Lincoln Iakopo limited by a sore shoulder, and he rarely found space to move. He gained just seven yards on 11 first-half runs — Carson generated just 25 rushing yards before halftime — and by the time the Colts (10-2) found their footing, after the break, there was only so much to be done.

Four turnovers, two providing short fields for quick Birmingham touchdowns and two ending Carson threats with end-zone interceptions, certainly didn’t help, although three were fourth-quarter pickoffs while the Colts played catch-up. They weren’t really in the game at any point following Waters’ touchdown at the start.

“We had a lot of chances down in the red zone, didn’t take advantage,” Carson coach Mike Christensen said. “We turned the ball over too much. … We were getting beat up front (in the first half) and we got a little better in some things, made some adjustments, but we got too far behind for the kind of game we play. We can’t get into a hole like that.”

The Colts managed two big gains — an Iakopo bullet over the middle that Latrell Cannon turned into a 60-yard gain just before halftime and Misaalefua’s 43-yard run on the second half’s first play from scrimmage — and managed just 120 yards on the other 59 offensive snaps.

“We shut (Misaalefua) down,” Birmingham coach Jim Rose said. “We can be physical when we need to be, and that was a physical game. Which I think we controlled for the most part.”

Carson used three quarterbacks but had a reasonable opportunity to throw only with Iakopo taking snaps. He completed just one of 10 throws, the Cannon reception to the Birmingham 21, but followed it with four incomplete passes, two of them into the end zone.

The Patriots were cruising by then. They’d marched into the red zone on their first possession but came away empty when Jacy Oliva’s 34-yard field goal attempt sailed wide left, then found the end zone on all three of their second-quarter possessions. Ronnell Hewitt scored the first his two touchdowns on the fourth play of the quarter, an 8-yard run after Misaalefua fumbled away a snap.

Carson answered immediately, with Kameryn Hurst galloping in from the 11, one play after his 10-yard gain was accompanied by 27 yards in penalties on a face-mask/late-hit combo — Birmingham was flagged 12 times for 127 yards in all — to trim the deficit to 14-6. It provided the Colts some hope, but that was soon gone.

Birmingham quarterback Kingston Tisdell completed 7 of 10 passes for 172 of his 183 yards in the first half, every completion going for a first down or touchdown, or both, with the University of Washington-bound Waters catching four for 79 yards. His 26-yard grab on third-and-18 set up a 32-yard touchdown throw to Antrell Harris Jr. midway through the second quarter, and he snared a 23-yard touchdown pass on the Patriots’ next possession for a 28-6 halftime lead.

The second half was a very different game. The Colts’ defense forced 3-and-outs on the first two of Birmingham’s three possessions and permitted just 39 yards and one first down while driving inside the Patriots 30 three times, with nothing to show for it. The first ended on downs at the 27, the second with Jomar Adams’ end-zone interception at the on third down play from the 6 two plays into the final quarter, and the third on Harris’ interception in the end zone with 38 seconds to go. Iakopo found Cannon at the back of the end zone the play before the last one, but a penalty flag killed that.

Misaalefua finished with 96 yards on 24 carries — he gained 89 in the second half == to push his season total to 1,624.

Birmingham tallied its final touchdown on its final drive, with Hewitt (68 yards on 18 carries) scoring from the 2 six plays after Cayden Chapelle intercepted Iakopo at the Colts 16.