Vista Murrieta returns to section championship game
BRONCOS BACK IN FINALS AFTER DOUBLE-OT STOP, AND WIN, OVER RANCHO CUCAMONGA
MURRIETA ---- The 11-month wait is over. Vista Murrieta's football team will get another crack at a CIF Southern Section championship.
Quarterback Derrick Brown rushed for two overtime touchdowns and the second-seeded Broncos dialed up a fourth-and-goal stop from the 1 to clinch a wild 35-28, double-overtime victory over Rancho Cucamonga on Saturday night to send host Vista Murrieta to its second Inland Division final in as many years.
"This is what you want in a semifinal game that goes to overtime," Broncos coach Coley Candaele said. "We had to make a play on fourth-and-1."
That play was a mano-a-mano stuff of running back Sateki Finau, who had rushed for 131 yards and two touchdowns through regulation and two overtime periods played without Cougars starting quarterback Dimitri Morales.
Switching between taking snaps out of a wildcat formation and handoffs from backup quarterback Chris Papack, Finau capped the Cougars' first overtime drive on a 2-yard touchdown run. But later, after Brown's second overtime touchdown run gave Vista Murrieta a 35-28 lead, Rancho Cucamonga stalled on Papacek's third-down goal-line sneak from the 1.
On the next play, Broncos linebacker Manuel Moreno burst through Rancho Cucamonga's beefy line to trip up Finau a foot short of the end zone and trigger a wild, on-field celebration.
"They came out in an offset backfield with a fullback and I knew they would give the ball to (Finau)," Moreno said. "They did that the whole game. The D-line held the O-line and I just jumped over the pile … and cut the running back's legs."
Said a wobbly Finau: "It was like a mountain in there. I didn't have no place to cut back. The guy nailed me."
Vista Murrieta (12-1) advances to play top-seeded Corona Centennial (13-0), a 42-23 winner over Chino Hills on Friday night and the No. 2 team in the state, according to rankings at calpreps.com. The Huskies will be playing in their seventh section championship and the sixth during coach Matt Logan's 14-year tenure.
Vista Murrieta, meanwhile, is playing in its second straight championship after falling to Southwestern League rival Chaparral, 13-7, on its home field last December.
"The important thing is we won by more than one point and we get to play next week," said Candaele, whose program last played Centennial in a 41-14 loss in the 2008 quarterfinals. "We'll deal with Centennial tomorrow. We'll enjoy this tonight. Centennial is awful good and we'll worry about them tomorrow."
Rallying from a rough start, Brown -- who threw for 103 yards and two scores and rushed for overtime TDs of 25 and 12 yards -- gave Vista Murrieta 14-7 lead midway through the third quarter on 20-yard scoring pass to Michael Mazur.
When Morales promptly capped a 10-play, 67 yard drive with a 35-yard touchdown pass to Donovan Harden, Darion Williams answered with a 97-yard kickoff return to retake the lead late in the third quarter.
The advantage stood, too, until J.T. Huggins punched in a 1-yard touchdown run at the end of a 12-play, 65-yard march with 1:46 left.
Brown gave Vista Murrieta a chance to end the game in regulation, hitting Michael Mazur and Shane Paulson on clutch passes and scrambling for 12 yards to set up Tyler Rausa's 43-yard field goal attempt with 4 seconds remaining. But the Cougars got a hand on the kick at the line and in fell harmlessly in the end zone as time expired.
Brown, of course, had more magic in overtime.
He needed just two touches to score two touchdowns, with a 25-yard run answering Finau's 2-yard run to tie the game at 28-28.
Then after a switch of fields and a penalty enforced at the end of Rausa's extra-point attempt, Brown ran up the middle again to stake the Broncos to a 35-28 lead.
The flurry of a finish was a far cry from Vista Murrieta's start Saturday night.
The Broncos had three three-and-outs to start the game and were faced with yet another punt when Brown fielded a high snap on fourth-and-7 from his own 24.
Rancho Cucamonga, though, didn't have a rush on the punt attempt and Brown tucked the ball in and scampered 21 yards up field for Vista Murrieta's first signs of life on offense.
Four plays later, Brown snapped a string of five incomplete passes to start the game with a floater that Williams ran under and took 33 yards to the end zone to tie the game at 7-7 with 3:20 left in the first half.