photos by Charlie McDonald (charlie.mcdonald@surewestsports.com)
by Mike Finnerty (mike.finnerty@surewestsports.com)
The Granite Bay Grizzlies entered the CIF Sac Joaquin Section Division I football championship as underdog to the Pleasant Grove Eagles, but they came out as champion with a gutty 30-24 win Saturday afternoon at Sacramento State University.
"It was two heavyweights today, it really was," said Granite Bay head coach Ernie Cooper. "It was exciting. There were a couple times in this game where I was saying, 'this is kinda fun!'"
Despite taking second place in the Sierra Foothill League this season, the role of underdog is a slightly exaggerated description of Granite Bay ranked No. 5 locally and as high as No. 6 in Northern California.
However, the Grizzlies (11-2) were taking on a Pleasant Grove (12-1) team that was not only the defending Division I section champion, but a team that had steam rolled their opponents this year by an average score of 54-10, with their closest game being a 14-point victory over Folsom that lost on the Division II section championship.
Granite Bay set the tone on the game's opening drive going 80 yards, and then capping it off with a Brendan Keeney 15-yard touchdown pass to Spencer Briare with 4:42 left in the quarter putting Granite Bay up 7-0.
Keeney found Briare again, this time on a 12-yard touchdown pass that came with 25 seconds remaining in the half to make it a 17-10 Grizzlies advantage that would hold until halftime.
Throughout the game Keeney was poised and confident, and he was efficient completing 13 of his 19 pass attempts to go with 137 yards and two touchdowns.
"It's such a surreal moment," said Keeney. "I've been dreaming about this for probably all my life. I was in eighth grade when the 07' team won the section championship. I've had dreams of doing that exact same thing, and now DI champs with my guys that I've played football with since I was 10 years old, unreal."
The Keeney to Briare combination was a scoring weapon twice, as well as on a key third down and fourth down play that kept drives alive.
"Section championship, I always want the ball," said Briare. "I want the ball every game. It was awesome. He (Keeney) did a great job tonight. Whole team did awesome. I'm stoked for everybody."
Pleasant Grove, a team that always looks to establish the run first, was unable to get much of anything out of its rushing attack.
Quarterback Cody Demps had a touchdown pass to his younger brother Wyatt Demps, a 67-yard bomb in the second quarter that tied the score at 10-10, but it would be Demps on a 45-yard touchdown run around a wide open left side that gave all indication that a winner wouldn't be decided until the the final minutes.
The Demps run, followed by Demps to Wyatt Demps pass for a 2-point conversion tied the game at 24-24 with 9:48 left to play.
Time and again the Grizzlies found success on the ground behind the running of senior Arik Bird. It was another big day for Bird who carried the ball 27 times for 165 yards, including a 6-yard touchdown run in the third that put Granite Bay up 24-16. The game winning score would come when Bird found a hole up the left side taking it 38 yards to go up 30-24 with 4:19 left in the game.
One of the key plays was a late fourth quarter fumble recovery by Briare, and from there it was just a matter of giving the all to Bird who picked up yardage and chewed time off the clock to secure the victory.
"All I was thinking was putting the team on my back and get the first down. It's all riding on me right now because anything could happen and we had to secure the win," said Bird.
Credit to the offensive line of Granite Bay led by Andrews, Kevin Blank, Colton Sviba, Koki Arai, and Justin Ramirez. The group protected Keeney and cleared holes for Bird, an effort that led to 380 yards of total offense.
Said offensive lineman and Oregon State commit, Gavin Andrews, "I was most impressed with our entire team. We weren't scared at all coming into this game. We knew that weren't invincible because of they lost by a point and we were going to take advantage of that.
The defense for Granite Bay, an underrated unit all season long, was up to the task and delivered. Big performances by linebackers Jimmy Malamatenios, Beau Hershberger, and Tony Milo, lineman like Andrews and Tyler Arneson, and defensive backs Alec Naki, Nick Bermudez, and Jacob Erickson, all contributed to holding Pleasant Grove to just 150 yards rushing. Even more impressive was the complete shutdown of Eagles' star running back Mark Jenkins who had less than 35 yards rushing.
For Cooper, who has been with the head coach for Granite Bay since the beginning (1996), he gets his first Division I banner to go with three Division II banners, he knew to lean on his senior stars.
"I have a little note in my pocket that says 'do not leave this field without milking No. 77 (Andrews), No. 18 (Keeney), No. 5 (Briare), and No. 7 (Bird), it's really those guys on offense. We had to maximize those guys. They are really good football players. Those guys all came through today.
Post game reaction:
Keeney - "They were keying on our runs, so we got in some run formations and started throwing the ball out of it, and I kind of threw them off a little bit, I think, just because we scored two touchdowns out of it, but it was just an overall well executed game on offense, and our defense stepped it up in the fourth quarter again, getting that big turnover, so just an all around great team experience right now, I couldn't be happier."
Bird - "It was crazy because we knew we had Armstead on the other side of the ball, we didn't know where he would be at, and he's a heck of player. You've got to give it to them, they won a section championship last year, but we knew that we're always coming out fighting as underdogs and we just had to get our pads under out opponents pads and get that first down."
Briare - "We practiced hard this week. We knew we had it in us, we knew that coming off that win against Lincoln that we could get it done, and that's what we did, we played hard all four quarters. We knew we were going to get'em. Everybody else didn't really have faith in us, but you know we have been the underdog all season. No body thought we would get this far, but it's awesome."
Andrews - "I was so impressed (with the running game). I battled hard with Armstead. He gave it his all, I believe he was only half strength with that shoulder, but at the end of the day we won it with our running game. It's great for the SFL over the Delta River League. We wanted to show our dominance and we did, both yesterday (Del Oro DIII win) and today."
Granite Bay section football championships
2011 - Division I (Granite Bay 30, Pleasant Grove 24)
2007 - Division II (Granite Bay 49, Del Oro 14)
2000 - Division II (Granite Bay 41, Oak Ridge 21)
1999 - Division II (Granite Bay 25, Oakdale 21)