The562’s coverage of St. Anthony athletics is sponsored by Jane & B.I. Mais, Class of 1948.
It wasn’t that St. Anthony wasn’t good enough to win Thursday night—it’s that they didn’t earn it.
The Saints entered the game 0-3 after a tough opening stretch against teams ranked hundreds of spots higher, but Thursday offered a more favorable matchup against fellow local private school Valley Christian. And while St. Anthony showed plenty of signs of a winning team, those flashes were plagued by costly turnovers and penalties in a 28-13 loss.
“We don’t wanna win a game that we don’t earn, and we didn’t earn a win tonight,” said second-year coach Jeff Magdaleno. “It was just a costly turnover, putting out backs against the wall, and penalties. We’re just killing ourselves. So next week we want to go out and earn a win, and when we earn a win we’re going to enjoy the heck out of it.”
There were plenty of positives to pull from either side of the ball for St. Anthony, and that started on the opening possession of the game. The Saints received the ball and put together a 15-play, 10-minute drive to take an early lead capped off by a one-yard plunge by 6-foot-2, 220-pound Bosco transfer Elijah Cooper.
Despite continuing to move the football well throughout the game, the Saints’ following drives were killed by penalty flags and offensive miscues. St. Anthony was held scoreless for nearly 30 minutes of game time after its opening drive until the fourth quarter.
“See we’ve seen the glimpse but we just have to continue to stack good plays on top of each other like we did on the opening drive, but we have to clean up some of those errors in the middle of the game,” Magdaleno said of his offense. “We just have to play more complete football.”
Valley Christian had a similar opening drive in the first quarter and found the end zone on a seven-yard touchdown rush from running back Tyson McNeese. Momentum completely took the Defenders’ side on the Saints’ ensuing drive when a mishandled read-option exchange led to a fumble picked up by Sam Melcher and returned for a Valley Christian touchdown.
The Defenders added another pair of touchdowns in the second half, including a six-yard pass from QB Graham Lunzer to Oliver Boateng. Valley Christian concluded its scoring in the fourth after an impressive contested jump ball hauled in by Max Douglas in the left side of the end zone.
Defensively, St. Anthony put up a tough fight despite working against unfavorable field position. Nick Webster had a pair of sacks, including a strip sack recovered by Michael Kyle. It was also hard to miss senior linebacker Jeremiah Taufi, who led the Saints in tackles while battling two hand injuries and playing with both hands clubbed.
“All the credit goes to Rich Gonzalez, our defensive coordinator,” Magdaleno said of his team’s defensive performance. “We know going into games that they’re going to keep us right there. We face drastically different offenses every week this year and they’re doing a good job executing.”
St. Anthony found the end zone one more time in the fourth quarter on a quick five-play drive led by junior quarterback Aidan Jones. Jones took a big hit on his final throw of the drive, delivering a perfectly placed ball over the middle to senior Andres Mendoza for a 15-yard touchdown.
Jones finished the game with over 100 yards passing and a touchdown. Mendoza had seven catches for 64 yards and a touchdown.
For Valley Christian, Lunzer threw for 215 yards and a touchdown with 27 yards on the ground. Douglas had four catches for 47 yards and a score while Boateng had five catches for 64 yards and a touchdown.
The loss puts St. Anthony in a similar spot as last year when they started the season 0-4 in Magdaleno’s first year. The Saints won eight of their last nine when that happened a season ago en route to a CIF-SS championship game.
“We don’t wanna be in this position, but we’re getting better,” he said. “Our guys have an unbelievable unity as a team and they’re super close. We really used that last year and we have the same make up, we just have to take it to the next week. We’re back to work Monday and we’ll take it one opponent at a time and do whatever it takes to get that feeling [of a win].”
