Aragon flexes muscle in win over Panthers

In front of an overflow, capacity crowd at Burlingame, Aragon (6-1 overall, 5-0) showed why it's been the PAL's dominant team in the last five years. The Dons racked up 419 of their 506 yards on the ground. They were bigger, stronger and surprisingly just as quick as Burlingame (5-2, 3-1), which totaled 373 yards. The victory put the Dons into the driver's seat for a second straight Bay championship and third in the last four years.

On Aragon's second possession, Williams exploded for an 80-yard touchdown run. After Drew Shiller's 26-yard field goal, Noel Alexandre hooked up with Sean Mosman for a 31-yard touchdown to make it 14-3 with 8:52 left in the first quarter.

Williams added scoring runs of 2 and 30 yards, giving Aragon a commanding 28-3 lead with 2:10 remaining until halftime. That's when the Panthers got to work. They scored on their next four possessions, capped by Shiller's 85-yard scoring toss to Ryan Gilbert. The play brought Burlingame to within 34-29 with 7:26 left in the third, but the Panthers went scoreless the rest of the way.

"Coach (Steve Sell) told me not to dance at the line (of scrimmage) anymore," Williams said. "So I decided to just hit the hole hard. My offensive line did a great job of opening things up and I just took advantage of that."

Added Sell: "Dominic chose the right time to have his best game of the year. He played like a man possessed and just looked like a different person out there. We might have to play our home games somewhere else now."

In the midst of all the offensive fireworks, it was Aragon's defense that buckled down in the final quarter, providing a couple of key stops in the fourth quarter. It was just enough to hold off Shiller, who was stellar yet again in completing 20 of 39 passes for 296 yards, including touchdown throws of 9, 13 and 85 yards.

"Hats off to Aragon," Burlingame coach John Philipopoulos said. "They're one heckuva football team. They came out like gangbusters and capitalized on our mistakes. But I'm proud of my football team. They have hearts of gold. We lost but this was fun. Look at this (crowd). This place was rockin' tonight and it was just awesome. It was high school football at its finest. Of course we're disappointed, but we'll move on. There's a lot of football left."

Sell used the local media as a little motivation in preparing his squad. A couple of newspapers predicted Burlingame victories, which had Sell grinning afterwards.

"We copied it (the predictions) and blew it up," Sell said. "But I did it because of how we played last week (an impressive 44-21 win over Terra Nova). I didn't want our kids to come in overconfident. This game was an absolute toss-up and I felt like we had to score on every possession because Burlingame was playing so well."

The Dons had five players rush for 36 yards or more. Mosman had two receptions for 46 yards. Gabe Weisbarth led the Panthers with 60 yards rushing on eight carries, while Brandon Cervelli had six receptions for 52 yards. Gilbert had four catches for 140 yards and O'Leary finished with five catches for 60 yards.