Sacred Heart Prep Gators gobble up Mountain View in lopsided 41-7 football win

Chetcuti and Stephens, along with edge rushers Eliseo Buffington and Teo Casares, steamrolled Mountain View in the Gators’ 41-7 victory Saturday afternoon at Gator Nation Field. The Spartans managed to cross midfield just once through the opening three quarters until producing their first points of the game on their final possession in the fourth.

“The line on both sides of the ball continues to dominate,” Sacred Heart Prep head coach Mark Grieb said.

The Gators (2-1) have allowed just 33 points through three games this season, with 26 of those coming in the fourth quarter. Only one fourth-quarter score has hurt them, when Sacred Heart Cathedral ran a trick pass play for a touchdown to hand the Gators a 13-12 loss in the season opener. Since then, SHP has been playing with fiery abandon, dismantling Homestead-Cupertino 42-13 in Week 2, and outgaining Mountain View 346-173 in total yards Saturday.

But it was a surprise SHP possession to open the game that set the tone against Mountain View (1-2). The Gators recovered a fumble on the opening kickoff, with senior Jacob Prabhu pouncing on the loose ball, to take over at the Mountain View 9-yard line. Two plays later, junior running back Anthony Noto dove in for a 1-yard score less than a minute into the game.

Noto said the Gators came out hungry after losing a close one 24-21 to Mountain View last season.

“This year, that was really just a great energy booster,” Noto said. “That really got us going. We went in there and ran two plays, scored, came back out and we were like: ‘This is where we finish them.’ We’re punishing them for making that mistake at the beginning of the game and we’re just going to keep scoring and scoring until they quit.”

SHP missed a scoring chance on its second possession on a missed 41-yard field goal attempt. But a Mountain View three-and-out on three straight pass plays gave the Gators the ball back at the 22, and the multi-faceted offense moved the ball 78 yards on 11 plays to finish with a 3-yard scoring run by Andrew Latu.

The Gators rushed for 239 yards as a team despite not having a single player run for 100 yards. Latu carried 16 times for a game-high 84 yards; senior Brandon Hsing totaled nine rushes for 51 yards; Noto had nine carries for 45 yards and two touchdowns; Luke Maxwell totaled four carries for 21 yards and a touchdown; and Casares saw time in the backfield in the second half, carrying two times for 36 yards.

“I feel like we’ve got a lot of guys who are big play guys, I just think we did great job today of getting a lot of guys involved and being a team that’s balanced and versatile,” Grieb said. “And that’s what we want to do. I mean, obviously, we’d like to hit a few more big plays, but I thought the way we controlled the ball and the way we ran it, it always starts with that.”

While the Gators added a 2-yard scoring run by Hsing in the opening minute of the second quarter, and scored on each of their first three possessions in the second half — including a 39-yard scoring bomb from quarterback Mitchell Taylor to a wide-open Carter Shaw — to push the lead to 41-0, the defense was busy dropping the proverbial hammer.

Mountain View sustained just one drive that reached SHP territory in the first half. Taking over at their own 36, the Spartans got first-down pass completions from junior quarterback Kevin Conway of 12, 17 and 6 yards. After advancing to the Gators’ 7, the drive stalled, with the Spartans failing to convert passes on third- and fourth-down, turning it over on downs for SHP to take knee and send it to halftime.

“I think we came out of the gate strong and even though the game had its ups and downs, I thought we controlled it,” Grieb said. “And even when Mountain View had that surge on their third or fourth drive, the defense just really tightened up when they needed to keep them out of the end zone. So, I thought it was a great performance from our defense today.”

Mountain View scored on the final play of the game, amid a running clock, on a 38-yard pass from Conway to sophomore Viliami Sekona.

The Gators are looking at a stacked schedule from here on out. Next week, SHP welcomes Riordan to town, along with an old rival in Crusaders first-year head coach Adhir Ravipati, who coached the Gators’ crosstown rival Menlo-Atherton from 2015-18, including the 2017 season when Grieb arrived at SHP.

From there, SHP hosts Los Gatos Friday, Sept. 23, before opening Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division play Saturday, Oct. 8 against Half Moon Bay.

“No matter who we play, we’ll play as a team and keep working as a team,” Stephens said. “We don’t have any selfish players. We all play for each other. So, I think as long as we take that to the Bay league, we have a great chance of winning our division this year.”

The Gators showed their mettle over the past week by practicing every day, despite the heat wave that shuttered so many practice sessions for outdoor high school sports, especially in the south county.

“We didn’t have the best week of practice, but we practiced every single day,” Chetcuti said. “Because of the heat, a lot of teams took days off. We didn’t have that mindset at all. We were going to get our hours in no matter what time.”