Panthers closing in on Bay title

And if that wasn't enough, the winner would stand alone atop the Peninsula Athletic League Bay division.

Yes, the hype was big for yesterday's boys' match between Burlingame ((9-1-1) and Menlo-Atherton (8-2-1) and it lived up to it's billing with the Panthers holding off the Bears, 2-1.

"It was a very big win," said Burlingame coach Mike Sharabi. "You like to say that every game you go into you want to win -- it doesn't matter if it's for first place (or the) first game of the year, you always want to win. Whether you're training or in the CCS championship. And it's a very big win. They got the better of us earlier this season and after that game we really felt we were going to come back and work hard and that we would get them at home and it worked out. It's just a very big win and hopefully it leads to bigger and better things for this fantastic team."

The Panthers now control their own destiny with three games left on the league schedule -- and they have their defense to thank for that.

In the first contest, Burlingame was stun on two occasions and could not handle the speed of M-A striker Edgardo Molina. This time around, Stewart Farley, Giovanny Leyva and Sebastian Trevino were up to the task.

"We just made sure to stay organized," Farley said. "They (M-A) play their two forwards out wide a lot of times, so we made sure someone was on them at all times (and that) they didn't get behind us."

Burlingame seized control of the game in the 5th minute, capitalizing on a huge mistake by the M-A backline that left goalkeeper Jonathan Friedman way out of position. As the ball rolled aimlessly outside the Bears penalty box, Andy Gonzalez approached it and skillfully lobbed the ball over the M-A defense and into the net for the 1-0 lead.

"That first goal, it shouldn't have happened," said M-A head coach Jacob Pickard. "No disrespect to Burlingame, but we handed them the game, we gave it to them. Those two goals, we handed them to them. They were there to put them away, so all credit to them for that, but we handed those goals to them. We have no one but ourselves to blame."

With the lead in hand, the Panthers focused on their defense, doing their best to neutralize Molina and Enrique Ortiz. Aaron Oro played solid in the midfield along with Dimas Ayala in the back. But the Bears lacked that final pass to spring their forwards.

They thought they had the equalizer in the closing minute of the first half when Molina netted a cross. But the referee's flag was up for offside.

And in the seconds that followed is where the Panthers won the game. Thirty seconds after the negated score, behind the outstanding efforts of Eduardo Trujillo and Dean Aliamus, Victor Prieto placed a shot to Friedman's lower right, stunning the Bears for the 2-0 lead going into the half.

"That's how cruel this game can be, or how great his game can be," Sharabi said. "One minute, they have the ball in the net and it gets called back, and the next minute, it's a goal. That's why this game is so beautiful. We finished in the first five minutes, we finished in the last five minutes of the half and we believe that we're fit, fitter than everyone and you know, that's why in those last five minutes we're going to push and push and push until we get that goal and we did."

Sharabi made some changes to start the second half in anticipation of a re-focused and determined M-A attack. Now with five in the backline, the Panthers turned away wave after wave of Bears offense with Connor Johnson ruling the air and not allowing any lob to find the M-A strikers.

But you can only keep a good offense down for so long and with 20 minutes gone in the second half, the Bears pulled one back. Molina was the beneficiary of some great work by Flint Mitchell, who weaved his way into the offensive zone and found Molina, who beat the Burlingame keeper to cut the deficit in half.

"Until that goal went in, they were just phoning it in," Pickard said of his team. "They were disappointed about (their play) but they weren't doing anything to rectify that. It was like they were playing in a coma. It was something you wouldn't want to see in a game with something like a championship on the line. You wouldn't like to see that kind of response from you team. So I'm incredibly disappointed by that."

M-A pressed, but it was Burlingame who actually put together another pair of great scoring chances that only magical saves from Friedman kept from increasing the lead.

The Bears would get their opportunities though, as the head referee allotted more than a handful of minutes of injury time -- and Molina got a clean look at goal seconds before the whistle, but his attempt was saved.

"They worked so hard, they won five straight games to get even with Burlingame," Pickard said, "We get back to here, this is where we want to be, the best we could have hoped for was getting even with them and having it all to play for in this game. They just floundered ... so obviously they don't deserve to be champions."