Menlo undone by Palma soph in CCS Division III football semifinals

As a freshman, Dukes ran for 176 yards and two touchdowns as the Chieftains beat M-A in a CCS Division III Semifinal. Now a sophomore, Dukes ran 29 times for 213 yards, racked up 40 receiving yards and ran for all three Palma touchdowns in a 24-23 win over the Knights in a Division II Semifinal.

Thanks to Dukes’ excellence, it’ll be Palma, not Menlo, that takes aim at top seed and PAL Bay champion Wilcox in next Saturday’s championship game.

“He’s a really special kid. We couldn’t get off the field against him on third downs,” Menlo head coach Todd Smith said of the 5-foot-10, 172-pound sophomore. “He reminds me of Pat Tillman, the way he leans when he runs.”

A Morgan Hill native, Smith faced Tillman in his Pop Warner days, long before Tillman’s NFL career and deployment to Afghanistan.

Even if the game had been played on Cartan Field, which had turned from grass to mud after a week’s worth of rain, the sixth-seeded Knights likely would have struggled to stop Dukes, who finished the regular season with over 1,500 rushing yards and now stands at 1,937 through twelve games.

But Menlo (8-4) still had its chances. Trailing by three after Gio Gutierrez’s 28-yard field goal, the Knights picked up 25 yards on a hook-and-ladder and entered Palma territory on a Jack Freehill scramble, only for Dominic Chaidez to intercept an overthrown pass two plays later.

“It wasn’t our first read, but we liked the matchup 1-on-1,” Smith said of the interception. “We just couldn’t get on top of the corner.”

Starting at its own 9 with 1:50 left, No. 7 Palma (7-5) unsurprisingly handed off to Dukes, who ran for five yards on first down. The play was negated by a holding penalty, which backed the Chieftains halfway to their goal line. But rather than giving Menlo the option to start the clock on the next snap, the referees signaled to wind the game clock, allowing the visitors to run off a crucial 25 seconds before their next play.

“I have no idea why they started the clock right there,” Smith remarked. “I was not told that until after we accepted the penalty. First I was told it was second-and-9, and I would have declined it.”

That series ended up being one of the only times Menlo was able to quiet Dukes. Liam Pappalardo stopped him for a loss after the holding flag, and Jamie Forese dropped him at the 6 on third down. With 25 seconds left, Dukes, who also serves as the Chieftains’ punter, took the snap in the end zone and burned off seven previous seconds before stepping out of bounds to concede a safety.

“It was a tough decision,” Palma head coach Jeff Carnazzo said. “We had originally called a punt, but I didn’t like the way they lined up to block it.”

Jack Enright returned the ensuing kick 27 yards to Palma’s 39, and after pressure from Alfredo Novoa forced an incompletion, Enright took a Freehill screen down to the 38 with two seconds left. Freehill’s spike with a second left gave the Knights a chance at a Hail Mary, and Tyler Fernandez caught Freehill’s final pass in a crowd at the 8-yard line. But he had no hope of getting to the end zone and tossed the ball backwards as he fell, hoping a teammate would miraculously pick it up and run it in to the end zone. Instead, Palma’s Caden Scherer fell on it, ending the game and the Knights’ season.

“These kids really dig in and believe, and that’s why this one is really tough to swallow,” Smith said. “What we get out of the kids is so far from what you think it’s gonna be. We’ve been to two semifinals and two section finals in the last four years.”

Freehill completed 13 of 22 passes for 176 yards and ran 15 times for 144. He threw touchdowns to both Forese and Chuck Wynn and ran for a game-tying 8-yard score on fourth-and-goal on the first play of the fourth quarter. Forese also led the defense with four tackles for loss, two of them solo.

“That kid’s been doing it on varsity since he was a sophomore,” Smith said of Forese. “He was utility player of the year in one of the two best leagues in our section.”

Brett Frauenhofer also made his mark on defense for Menlo, preventing Palma from taking the lead before halftime with a tip drill interception and blocking a 30-yard field goal in the second quarter.

But the Knights also squandered a red zone opportunity. Tied at 14 in the third quarter, a Menlo lineman took exception to a Palma player who got tangled up with Freehill after forcing him out of bounds on a third-and-goal bootleg. The unsportsmanlike conduct penalty sent the Knights back to the 19. They did get five yards back when Palma jumped offside, but missed the 31-yard field goal.

“He’s a really good kid, but he made a really bad decision trying to protect his players,” Smith said of the penalty. “If we’re at the 4, we would’ve gone through a different decision-making process.”

Palma then jumped on another special teams mistake to extend its next drive when sophomore Isaak Hernandez pounced on a muffed punt. Dukes took a Patrick Driscoll dump-off for a 40-yard gain on third-and-16 and scored his third touchdown from 11 yards out with 4:02 left in the third.

His 54-yard touchdown on a third-and-10 draw play gave Palma a 7-0 lead with 4:18 left in the first. Wynn got Menlo on the board with a 9-yard reception on a screen pass on the opening play of the second quarter. Freehill ran for 53 yards on the first play after Frauenhofer’s blocked field goal and threw a 30-yard touchdown to Forese three plays later, but Dukes pulled the Chieftains even at 14 on a 33-yard scamper to the end zone with 2:34 left in the first half.