HUNTINGTON BEACH — The North Torrance baseball team made its twelfth consecutive CIF-Southern Section playoff appearance this year by moving up to Div. 3 and saw first hand just how much of a gap there really is.
Edison, one of the O.C.’s elite teams which entered the game a winner of 11 of its previous 12 regular season games, seized control early Thursday evening and never looked back Thursday night with a dominant performance using a variety of big plays and a simply enormous, NFL caliber line that all but neutralized the Saxons en route to the 24-0 victory on the friendly turf of Huntington High.
The Chargers (7-4), who next week face Friday night’s Bonita-Cathedral winner, harassed sophomore quarterback Boogie Anetema all night and stifling North’s running game, the Chargers were forced to punt on 6 of 8 possessions, 3 of which were 3-and-outs and the other two were turnovers.
The Saxons (8-2), ranked No. 4 in the Daily Breeze, was held to minus-29 yards rushing — which was almost all from a grounding penalty and a snap across the face of the goal line that wiped out the Pioneer League champions’ only trip inside the red zone — and the weird concoction of a high-powered passing offense couldn’t make much of what little the team created on the ground.
“Their guys up front, they’re not getting moved by us …,” North coach Todd Croce, whose team lost a Division 8 season-opener last year after playing in Division 6 the previous two years commented. “[We had] no jump start from the quarterback, so the chances to make the rush were very rare and they dropped back perfectly in the pass. There were some decent drives where we were able to move the ball but never capitalized [and never kicked our selves here and there when we got to the red zone-ish.. It is impossible to do that in this type of game.”
Anetema (14 of 30 for 175 yards) found his brother Kingston (six catches for 120 yards) open twice on deep routes. On the second half’s opening drive with only two points out of lead the first was a 40-yard bomb into Edison territory that was followed by a red zone interception four plays after. The second was a 44-yarder on fourth-and-11 to the Chargers 19 toward the middle of the fourth quarter which came a tick too late. A completion for a first down and an end zone pass interference penalty took the Saxons to the 4 but Edison recovered a bad snap which went over Anetema’s head to clinch the shutout.
“They had a good game plan. That’s a great team …,” Boogie Anetema said. “They’re big up front. That is one of the things that could have been noticed on the film, that they are dawgs down there. These are very large, and they contributed a lot to the problems as well.”
Edison got touchdowns on the opening drives in the first, second and the third quarters. Julius Gillick sparked the opening drive with his 3-yard run Sam Edmisten. At half time it stayed 14-0 with the 60yard touchdown pass by Sam Thomson to `elatively accuse’ Aidan Brown. And Gillick, who was held to 105 yards rushing on the night after being hampered by an achilles injury all year, took it in from the 28 for the fifth touchdown in eight games while amassing 1,784 yards on the season and 3,380 overall. Nico Bammer added a 34-yard field goal on the last second of the last three minutes of the third perimeter.
Croce was a content man knowing that whatever his team had offered on the field was the best they could offer.
“Our kids don’t back down to anything,” he said. “They don’t play with fear. … The most important factors were the resilience, the effort, the we’re-going-to-battle-no-matter-the type of scenario. When I said ‘we didn’t look at the scoreboard, ‘ we just kept on going.” It wasn’t apparent to you how hard we were going by the score.”
