The Fresno City College football team defeated West hills College 44-37 in a game that gave Head Coach Tony Caviglia his 100th victory for the Rams.
The losing West Hills coach was proud of his team’s performance. At the end of the game, he said to his players a “You ran out of gas, but it wasn’t because you weren’t fighting.”
On the other hand, the winning Rams’ coach was very upset with his team’s play as he vigorously pointed out their errors to them in the locker room. He later spoke about the pros and the cons of his team’s play. “I thought we played hard; we didn’t play really good, but we played well enough to win,” said Caviglia. “We missed blocking assignments and we missed tackles, but we had a lot of success with our vertical passing game. We had a great goal line stance.”
The Rams scored first at the 12:45 mark in the first quarter when linebacker Calib Justice intercepted a pass intended for a Falcon’s receiver, and ran it back 46 yards. The Falcons were down 10-0 before running back Nick Green ran the ball into the end zone from 16 yards out. The Rams were up 17-14 when the Falcons briefly took the momentum and the lead in the second quarter by scoring 14 points within a 27 second time span. The first of the 14 points came when Green muscled the ball into the end zone from the one yard line on a drive that went 46 yards in six plays.
The Rams fumbled the ensuing kick off after two Falcon players made two big hits on returner Tayathi Mankin on the Rams 26 yard line. West Hills’ Pritchard Denni scooped up the fumble and ran the ball 26 yards to put the Falcons up 28 -17. Rams quarterback Lance Orender moved quickly to put his team back on track when he completed a 46 yard touchdown pass to a wide open Kyle Novack on their next possession. “I did my fake handoff, looked up and saw that Novack was wide open, so all I had to do was make an easy throw,” said Orender.
The Rams went into halftime down 34-31 and came back into the game poised to regain and hold their lead. Caviglia shared what he told his team at halftime.
“We regrouped and showed the players what West Hills was doing to us,” said Caviglia. “We also made a few adjustments and vowed that we were going to play better in the second half.”
And that is just what the Rams did. Their defense only allowed three points in the second half, and their offense went vertical to regain hold of the lead.
Orender completed the last two of his five touchdown passes in the third quarter. He completed a 35 yard pass to Travis Leroy and a 41 yarder to put the Rams up by seven points with 55 seconds left in third quarter. “It was good to comeback and finish the game outright,” said Caviglia. “Just to be able to play good defense in the second half, and to win the game spoke volumes about the attitude and temper of this football team.”
