Sacred Heart Prep familiar with Summerville’s offense

Summerville (12-1) finished as tri-champions of the Mother Lode League in the Sac-Joaquin Section, going 5-1. The Bears won their first-ever SJS championship this season when they beat Merced’s Stone Ridge Christian 38-12 in the Division VII championship game.

In that game, junior quarterback Bryce Leveroos was nearly unstoppable. He scored touchdowns on runs on 18, 28, 43 and 5 yards.

“Their quarterback might be the coach’s son and he plays like it,” said SHP head coach Mark Grieb. “They probably run 95% of the time. They run what I like to call ‘traditional power (running).’ They’re pulling someone every play. Someone is blocking down on every play and they want to run downhill.”

To accomplish that, Grieb said the Bears like to stress the edges with the “rocket sweep,” in which the quarterback take the snap in shotgun, pivots around and either hands the ball off or pops it in the air for the runner to grab on the fly.

The only difference between Summerville’s rocket sweep and the 7-6 Gators’ fly sweep is that in Grieb’s offense, quarterback Nico Pollioni doesn’t pivot and is facing the line of scrimmage when he hands the ball off.

But the strategy is the same.

“You make the defense cover the whole field and then you force them to have to make choices,” Grieb said. “That’s the advantage of the fly offense — we’re going to make you defend the whole field.”

It only works, however, if you get production from the flybacks and the Gators have had enough of it to force teams to defend it. In SHP’s 24-14 win over King’s Academy in the CCS quarterfinals, it was Kyle Chai who had the big play, twice scoring on fly sweeps that went for a combined 80 yards.

Last week, it was Sasha Bamdad who made the big play in the CCS final. After SHP’s Aseli Fangupo’s scoop-and-score was answered by a 44-yard scoring strike by Burlingame, Bamdad scored on the next play from scrimmage. He shrugged off a potential tackle for a loss and broke off a 63-yard touchdown for the Gators’ final score.

Bamdad has rushed for 313 yards this season, averaging 7.1 yards per carry. More importantly, it allows Grieb to play both Chai and Bamdad, mostly, one way each.

“It’s nice to have Sasha because it allows Kyle to get more reps on defense. Playing flyback and defensive back at the same time is exhausting,” Grieb said. “So it allows Sasha to just be a flyback.

“That play he had last week, he was a hair away from a 3-yard loss,” Grieb continued. “He really covers ground. I don’t know if he knows how fast or how strong he is.”

Now with the Gators able to put pressure on the edges, and running backs Greg Gamitian and Maxime Morelle doing the dirty work between the tackles, Grieb just needs mid-season replacement Pollioni to continue do what he does — manage and guide the offense, and make the throws when asked to do.

Pollioni took over the quarterback role after Max Courson suffered an injury in a Week 5, 21-14 win over Hillsdale.

A quarterback, of course, is only as good as he receivers and his main target has steadily improved. McKinley Palmer stepped up huge in the win over Burlingame. Pollioni completed 7 of 8 passes for 61 yards last week — six completions and 45 yards of which went to Palmer. Of Palmer’s six catches, four were good for first downs.

“[Palmer has] come up huge. It was kind of a rough start to the season for McKinley, but to his credit, he just kept working. … He’s a good athlete,” Grieb said. “Nico deserves a lot of credit. Sometimes when you have a good run game, (the quarterback) doesn’t get credit for third-down throws (and first-down conversions). The biggest game for Nico was the M-A game. He had a rough game against Palo Alto, rough game against Los Gatos and a rough game against Wilcox and none of them went well,” Grieb continued. “Against M-A, he threw three touchdowns and had [255] yards (in a 21-7 win).”

The Gators will need to get strong performances from everyone when they face the Bears Saturday. Summerville, which is located just southeast of Sonora in the Sierra foothills, is riding a seven-game winning streak. During that run, they are scoring an average of 42.4 points, while allowing just over 9.

While the Bears present yet another run-heavy offense, Grieb believes the Peninsula Athletic League’s Bay Division — with big lineman and power running games — has more than prepared the Gators for a team like Summerville.

“[Summerville] beat a lot of teams, badly,” Grieb said. “I think it’s going to come down to who can play the run better (defensively).”