Fourth in a series this week on San Diego Section teams’ playoff matchups

IV-AA

Morse, staggered by a late-season, 47-6 loss to St. Augustine, recharged to win its last four games and claim the Tigers’ first San Diego Section championship in 24 years. The Skyline Drive squad was rewarded with the longest trip of the Southern California playoffs, 320 miles to Visalia and a 7:30 Friday evening kickoff against the 11-2 Central Valley Christian Cavaliers, winners of the Central Section’s Division IV.

Morse coach Tracy McNair has compiled a 60-55-1 record and stabilized the program since becoming head coach in 2009. The Tigers were 21-78 under three coaches from 1997-2008, a period in which the school underwent demographic change and football dramatically declined.

Morse had appeared in eight championship games and won five titles from 1979-96 under the legendary John Shacklett, one of the winningest coaches in County history with an all-time record of 229-156-8 (.659).

Morse’s 9-4 record represents the most victories in one season since the 12 in 1996, Shacklett’s last championship season.

The Tigers have done it with a running attack revolving around Shamar Martin, who has averaged 11.2 yards and gained 1,617 yards and scored 14 touchdowns.  Isiah Thompson has gained 1,569 yards with an 8.8-yard average and 13 touchdowns.

Eric Dragt, a 6-foot, 5-inch quarterback, has thrown for 1,638 yards and 23 Cavaliers touchdowns.  Running back Jaalen Rening has gained 1,216 yards and scored 28 touchdowns

Central Valley is ranked 108^th in the state and Morse 112th by Max Preps.  The computer-based Cal Preps.com assigned a 32.9 rating to the Cavaliers, 33.4 to Morse, and predicts a 31-24 Central Valley win.

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Central Valley met two San Diego Section teams in 1986, defeating Army-Navy, 21-0, and losing to Santa Fe Christian, 24-3…the school began in 1979 as an elementary unit and became a kindergarten-to-grade-12 school in 1982…Morse is named after the man credited with inventing the single wire telegraph system known as the Morse code…the school name is officially Samuel F. B. Morse…his middle names were Finley and Breese…Morse died in 1872 but a granddaughter, Leila Morse, was an honored guest at a ceremony dedicating the school in 1962…

Third in a series this week on San Diego Section teams’ Southern California playoff matchups.

III-AA

Lincoln rallied down the stretch with five consecutive victories and now is 10-4 after it appeared to be sliding into the abyss.

Coach David Dunn explained that injuries and other problems left him without enough players to take on Cathedral in the midseason, necessitating a forfeit by the Hornets, who also forfeited their opening game to Bloomington.

The Hornets changed gears the following week in a 24-14 win over Madison.

Lincoln began relying more on running back Carlito Nothaft, who was called on 77 times in the first nine games but carried the ball 90 times in the last five.  Nothaft has 1,201 yards and 15 touchdowns.  Raymond Spriggs (1,866 yards, 18 touchdowns) and Chris Davila (783 yards, 11 TD’s) both saw action at quarterback.

Cal Preps.com is predicting a 40-27 win for 12-2 Culver City, which will host the Hornets in a 7:30 kickoff Friday night. The computer entity is more impressed with the Centaurs’ statistics.

Greek mythology described a Centaur as a beast with the head, arms, and chest of a man but the legs of a horse.  This specimen relies on its arms, those of sophomore quarterback Zevi Eckhaus, who has passed for 3,122 yards and 46 touchdowns, and junior Nick Lucero, who has passed for 13 touchdowns and took over when Eckhaus missed two games. Wide receiver Kevin McGuire has caught 62 passes for a 17.1-yard average and 18 touchdowns, and five players have at least 29 catches.

Culver City averaged 44 points and scored 612 in its first 14 games.  Lincoln has a more modest 34.8 average and 417 points (not including the two forfeits).

Lincoln competes in the arguably stronger San Diego Western League with Cathedral, St. Augustine, Madison and Point Loma.  The Centaurs are aligned in the Southern Section’s Ocean loop, which includes league champion Lawndale, Hawthorne, Beverly Hills, El Segundo, and once powerful Santa Monica.

Lawndale won the teams’ head-to-head meeting, 37-36, and Palos Verdes Estates edged Culver City, 34-27.

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Cal Preps.com assigned Culver City a 47.4 rating…the Centaurs are ranked 32^nd in the state by Max Preps and they are not in Cal-Hi Sports’ top 50…Lincoln also is outside the top 50 and is given a 41.5 rating by Cal Preps.com and is slotted at 68^th by Max Preps…Culver City played St. Augustine here in 1952, a year after the Centaurs opened their doors, and the Saints, 2-5-1 that season, took a 14-6 decision…Culver did not  renew acquaintances here until Point Loma signed a home-and-home agreement that ran for four seasons, 2004-07…coach Mike Hastings’ Pointers were 38-12 during this period but could get only a 2-2 split with the Centaurs, who won the last two games, 40-13 and 54-35… the Dunn-coached Hornets are making their first Southern California playoff appearance and last won a San Diego Section title in 2012….

Four city schools made the final Union-Tribune Top 10, an outstanding achievement for an area, once the most powerful in the County but lately looking up.

No. 1 Cathedral, 3 St. Augustine, 8 Lincoln, and 9 Morse all are in the Southern California playoffs this week, and San Diego, which accumulated a healthy amount of voting points, also is in the quest for laurels outside the San Diego Section.

Week 15 final poll:

Rank             Team                        Record                Points           Previous

Others: Mission Hills (5-7, 23 points), Mira Mesa (10-1, 21)), San Diego (10-2, 21), Steele Canyon (9-3, 21), La Costa Canyon (6-4, 6), El Centro Central (12-1, 5). Chridtian (10-2, 1).

Voting panel: 30 sportswriters, sportscasters, and officials from throughout the County.

• • John Maffei, The San Diego Union                                                                  Jim Lindgren, Rick Hoff, Terry Monahan, Don Norcross, Tom Saxe, Union-Tribune correspondents
  • Paul Rudy, Brandon Stone, KUSI Chl. 51
  • Adam Paul, ECpreps.com
  • Ramon Scott, EastCountySports.com
  • Bodie DeSilva, sandiegopreps.com
  • Ted Mendenhall, Tyler Quellman, The Mighty 1090
  • Steve Brand, San Diego Hall of Champions
  • Troy Hirsch, Fox 5, San Diego
  • Rick Smith, PartletonSports.com
  • Jerry Schniepp, John Labeta, Ron Marquez, Carlton Hoggard, CIF San Diego Section
  • Joe Heinz, Coordinator, Athletics, Sweetwater School District
  • Raymond Brown, sdfootball.net
  • Montell Allen, MBA Sports/San Diego Friday Night Lights Magazine
  • Bob Petinak, Fox 1360 Radio
  • John Kentera, Brandon Suprenant, 97.3 FM The Fan
  • Steve (Biff) Dolan, Mountain Country 107.9 FM
  • Jim Arnaiz, Mike Dolan, John Carroll, San Diego Section Tournament Directors.

Second in a series this week on San Diego Section playoff matchups:

A month ago St. Augustine was an unlikely candidate for a Southern California playoff spot.

The Saints were coming off a shocking, 27-24 loss to Madison in a game that had been postponed because of lightning bolts three days before, at a point in the late third quarter when St. Augustine led, 24-7.

The defeat, after losses to Helix, 34-14, and Cathedral, 35-14, left first-year coach Joe Kremer’s squad reeling with three losses in four weeks.

The Saints righted themselves and enter this step of the state eliminations in Division II-AA on a five-game winning streak, highlighted by a 21-20 win over Helix in the Week 14 San Diego Section D-I final.

The Saints escaped by the thinnest margin, a fumbled snap by Helix in overtime on a two-point conversion attempt.  The Highlanders had kicked a point to tie the game, 21-21, but Helix coach Robbie Owens, presented with an opportunity when St. Augustine was penalized on the PAT, decided to opt for a two-point option and victory.

The Helix error sent the Scots packing and the Saints on a 168-mile jaunt to Cal Lutheran University, where they will meet Simi Valley Grace Brethren Friday night at 7:30.

The Grace Brethren Lancers have an advantage of Cal Lutheran’s being barely 12 miles and a 20-minute drive from their campus.

Such a travel edge usually can be overcome, but the Lancers (12-2), predicted to win, 24-21, by Cal-Preps.com, and with a rating of 59.1 to 51.7,  are ranked 16^th in the state by  Max Preps, compared to St. Augustine’s 32nd, and 24^th, compared to St. Augustine’s 47th, by Cal-Hi Sports.

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The Lancers are 0-1 against San Diego teams, having lost to host The Bishop’s, 21-20, in 2005…Grace Brethren defeated Paramount, 41-12, in the Southern Section playoffs…Paramount scored a 26-18 victory over San Diego Section Mission Hills in the season opener…Brethren is a member of the Camino League, which includes Santa Barbara Bishop Diego, Moorpark, Camarillo, and Thousand Oaks…the Lancers like to give the ball to 5-foot-8, 225-pound running back Lontrell Diggs, who averages 167.9 yards a game and has scored 32 touchdowns, tied for 17^th as the most in the state…quarterback Mikey Zele has passed for 1,567 yards and 9 touchdowns…St. Augustine is led offensively by three underclassmen, sophomore quarterback Angelo Peraza (2,396 yards, 25 touchdown passes), junior wideout Samuel Scaife III (48 catches, 14 touchdowns), and sophomore running back Byron Cardwell (1,081 yards and 5.1-yard average, and 13 touchdowns.

First in a series this week on San Diego Section Southern California playoff matchups.

DIVISION 1-AA

Two of the state’s most successful coaches will square off at Cathedral Friday night at 7:30 in this repeat of a Southern California playoff in 2016, when Cathedral defeated the Narbonne Gauchos, 35-28, en route to a 15-0 season and the Dons’ second state championship.

Harbor City Narbonne coach Manuel Douglas is 110-32 (.775) since taking over the Gauchos’ program in 2009 and has two state titles, 28-14 over Concord Clayton Valley in 2015 and 28-21 over Pittsburgh in 2017.

Douglas was 8-6 and 6-6 in his first two seasons, but his teams have won at least 10 games every season since 2011 and three times have won 14.  Narbonne is located in one of the most fertile football areas of Southern California, approximately 7 miles west of Long Beach Poly and about 3.3 miles southwest of Carson High, which for many years ruled the L.A. City Section.

Cathedral’s Sean Doyle, who played for the Dons when they were known as University of San Diego High and has coached them since 1996, posting a 193-92 (.677) record, parlayed the 2016 win over Narbonne into a state championship, 38-35 over Stockton St. Mary’s.  The Dons also won a title in 2009, when they measured St. Mary’s, 37-34.

Narbonne is named after Nathaniel Narbonne, who came South from the Sacramento gold rush in 1852 and eventually owned more than 3,500 acres of land as a cattle rancher in the area around Lomita and Harbor City.  Narbonne passed in 1881 and the school opened in 1925.

Cathedral opened in 1957, a year after the nascent University of San Diego played its first football game.

The Dons are led by Shawn Poma, who played a significant role in Cathedral’s 2016 championship, was injured for much of last season as the Dons fell to 5-7, and returned to rush for 1,413 yards, a 10.2-yard average, and has scored 17 touchdowns this season.

Junior quarterback D.J. Ralph, son of Jerry, the longtime San Diego-area head coach, has passed for 1,194 yards and 15 touchdowns.

Narbonne’s sophomore quarterback Jake Garcia has completed 76 per cent of his passes for 1,802 yards and 13 touchdowns. Sophomore Marceece Yetts is averaging 5.9 yards for 114 carries and scored 6 touchdowns.

TRUE GRID

Cathedral (11-1) is ranked 11^th in the state by Cal-Hi Sports and 16^th by Max Preps…the Dons’ Cal-Preps.com rating is up to 65.7…the three rating systems have the Gauchos at 13^th, 25^th, and 54.2, respectively…this will mark Narbonne’s third appearance here…the Gauchos defeated host Mount Miguel, 25-7, in 1971…movie director Quentin Tarentino attended Narbonne, as did Bo Derek, who was an international sensation in the movie Ten…Paul Pettit, major league baseball’s first 100,000 bonus baby, also attended Narbonne…Cathedral lists golfer Phil Mickelson and Los Angeles Lakers head coach Luke Walton among its graduates…Cathedral came from a 14-0 deficit to overcome Torrey Pines for the San Diego Section Open Division championship, 28-17 in Week 14…Narbonne defeated Los Angeles Garfield, 55-7 for the L.A. City Open title….

To all our friends and visitors, we are taking the week off for Thanksgiving and will resume on Sunday, Nov. 25.

Here’s to a San Diego State victory over Iowa State today.

Rick Smith & Henrik Jonson.