Central Coast Section Playoffs
Open Division
Friday's game
No. 5 Mitty (9-1) vs. No. 4 Palma (7-3) at Rabobank Stadium, 7 p.m.
One win away from perfection and perhaps the No. 1 seed, Mitty fell in its season finale and finds itself on the road against a team it has never beaten in the playoffs.
The Chieftains beat Mitty in 2006 and in the CCS title game in 2002. Palma, though, has dropped six of its past seven Open Division playoff games.
Of course, the loss of tailback Brandon Olivares to a separated shoulder puts a huge dent in Palma's bid for an upset.
Olivares, who set the single season and all-time school rushing records this fall at Palma, made up over 50 percent of team's attack.
The senior has 1,519 rushing yards. The rest of the team has managed 958 yards in total yards. Others will have to step up, including quarterback Mitch Kidd, who has completed over 55 percent of his passes.
One of his favorite targets has been Ryan Scarr. But the bigger question is who is going to run the ball? Chris Vargas is second on the team in rushing with 101 yards.
Mitty isn't going to overwhelm you with numbers -- having won two games by a point. It doesn't have a 1,000 yard rusher or a high-flying passing attack. It just wins games.
Palma has the sixth most wins in CCS playoff history with 40.
John Devine has been writing about high school sports in Monterey County since, well, practically since he was an athlete at King City in the days just after leather helmets. In PrepNation, John has even more in-depth analysis of the latest results and news he's brought to you in The Herald and in his weekly videos.
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5 comments:
A HUGE dent: Brandon has been a horse: he has 1653 yds on 316 carries (eclipsing Jack Myers' 1630 yds on 231 carries)....316 carries is tough on anyone's shoulder...
Seeing how much they relied on him from the first game with Carmel I wondered how he would make it through the whole season. It's a shame he got injured at the most critical juncture- he's a great back.
Palma has had a nice stable of great backs: Olivarria, Baird, Myers, Olivares: all over 1,000 yds for each of the last six years...let's hope Kidd lights it up!
If you have seen Mitty you would see they are probably the second best team in CCS. Very fast defense and RBs and passing game is very good. Havehave playmakers as well. They are hard to defend because they spread the ball around. Losing Oliveris is big, but Mitty would have stopped him like Saint Francis did if Palma gave him the ball like they did. Palma offense has taken a step back the past couple years as far as the offense. They need to spread the ball around and be more deceptive since they don't have depth of playmakers. They don't have the personnel to play smashmouth strait up football with the btter teams in CCS. Maybe in a couple years with the depth of offensive playmaker and line talent they have, but they haven't the last couple. I can say the defense has been looking pretty good though. If Palma doesn't sustain drives on their offense, this will be ugly. If Palma spreads the ball around, they might be in this game. Don't think they will win this year, but upsets happen. Maybe they should bring up some of the JV and Frosh skill players to help. They have a few that could have maybe started on varsity this year.
Next year Palma will have another 1000 yard rusher. The frosh broke Olivarez' frosh TD record and looks like he is going to be bigger and faster. Sophs are stacked woith offensive skill players. Unfortunately this year is probably going to end like the others, but the future looks bright for the program to get back up to competing against the top WCAL teams if they work hard. The juniors have some very strong defensive players so next season they could be as good or better than this team and they should be in an uptrend the next couple after. This won't bode well for the local teams.
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