From LBPOSTSports.com: Sometimes, you know a game is going to live up to the hype—fortunately for over 10,000 fans who came out to watch Poly and Lakewood play in the CIF Semifinals, that collective gut feeling was right on the money, as the Jackrabbits defeated the Lancers in a classic 20-10 showdown. The excitement over this game started about a half-second after Poly’s victory over Esperanza last week was official, and it continued right up until kickoff—we can guarantee you’ve never seen two teams more pumped to do their pre-game stretches.
The Lancers came out with a winning gameplan in the first quarter—run Jerry Stone, and keep Poly’s offense on the sideline. Their opening drive went 58 yards, and took over six minutes off the clock, as Stone chewed up time along with yardage. Poly was running a 3-4, and the Lancers initially had success moving the ball into the interior of the line, traditionally a more or less impossible task against the Poly Wall. After a Jesse Scroggins pass was dropped in the end zone, the Lancers settled for three—given that Stone had 8 carries for 43 yards and they’d moved the ball with relative ease, Lakewood’s offense was definitely feeling good about itself.
That confidence showed soon after on an impressive 80-yard touchdown drive that saw Stone gaining another 50 yards, and Jesse Scroggins tossing a screen to Kevin Anderson for the 8-yard touchdown. Poly then managed to march just far enough to allow David Skara to boot a 45-yard field goal through the uprights, and to hold Lakewood out of the end zone as the first half expired. Other than those two positives, they didn’t have much going in the first half. They were held to 76 yards of offense, while the defense gave up ten points. The Lancers possessed the ball for 15 of 24 minutes, and Lakewood ran 30 offensive plays to Poly’s 16.
It must have been a hell of a halftime speech.
Click here for the rest of the story by Mike Guardabascio…