<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
“It’s fun to play these kinds of games,” Coach Lara said after it was over, a nail biting 21-17 victory over Bishop Amat that came down to the wire (the Jackrabbits went for it on 4th and inches on the 1 yard line with just under two minutes in the game, setting up Richardson’s 1 yard go-ahead touchdown). This might surprise some, but you’ve got to remember that Lara is the kind of coach who will go out and schedule games against the defending national champions, the kind of coach who stacks his preseason schedule with some of the best teams in Southern California. Before the season, Lara told me that he hates blowouts, that he’d rather play a close game (like tonight’s) than roll through an opponent. I think that mentality has rubbed off on some of the offensive players and is a large part of why Poly was able to come out of the locker room and outscore the Bishop Amat Lancers 21-7 in the second half. “They really came to play and stepped up big. But I like these games though,” Daveon “The Burner” Barner said, laughing after the ‘Rabbits’ victory. Having a coach who can remain calm when you’re losing 10-0 at halftime in the first round of the playoffs is what allows a team to turn nerves into a sense of urgency and put points up on the board when they need to.<\/span><\/p>\n It doesn’t hurt that the Jackrabbits, when push comes to shove, can and will ram the ball down your throat with their running attack, which consists of three top-tier backs now that Cory Westbrook has returned. In the end, Westbrook, along with Melvin Richardson and Barner, carried the team offensively, combining for 196 of the team’s 313 total offensive yards and putting up all three of their touchdowns (Richardson had 2 and Barner had 1). The run game struggled in the first half, but came out strong in the second half. “We need to work on a lot. We got together, all the backs, and said ‘We’re not playing like we play.’ But we pulled through, we stayed together, nobody gave up: we fought to the end,” Westbrook told me after the game.<\/span><\/p>\n The other story tonight is, once more, the Poly Wall. But, like the running backs, it was definitely a game of two halves for the defensive unit. The Jackrabbits uncharacteristically gave up 10 points in the first half. They struggled against the pass game (Amat’s quarterback, Jerry McClanahan, had only 1 incompletion), and gave up big runs (18 yards for a touchdown by Deshawn Gaisie) when they focused their efforts on coverage. The second half was a whole different story, as the Jackrabbits only gave up one big play and forced two turnovers, including a fumble forced and recovered by Matt Jones that put the Poly offense on the field at Bishop Amat’s 7 yard line. “We stepped up when we had to,” said defensive coordinator Jeff Turley. “Matt Jones, he’s been throwing up all day, sick. But it’s a big game and you’ve got to play. He rips the ball out and gets us down there to get us in the end zone. That’s Poly defense.” I spoke with Jones after the game, and he said a huge part of that second half effort was the coaches. “Man, Turley basically just ripped us a new one and told us, ‘We need to play our game. We’re not playing our game.’ It was a wake up call.” <\/span><\/p>\n The ‘Rabbits didn’t seem to be playing their usual smashmouth style in the first half, and it showed. But after some big half time adjustments and motivation from the coaching staff, they managed to get things back on track and began to look like the first seed in the playoffs. It took some key plays from both sides of the ball to advance the Jackrabits to the second round of CIF playoffs (they are at Esperanza next week), but, as Turley put it: “It’s Poly. Guys always amaze you.”<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You read that right–rally. Poly fell behind, but got it together in time to pull out a victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5275"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5275"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}