Downey pulls away in second half to defeat Gregori 49-20, claim first place in CCAL
The battle for first place in the Central California Athletic League was indeed a battle — but only for two quarters.
The Downey High football team outscored Gregori by 29 points in the second half of Friday night’s game at Chuck Hughes Stadium en route to a resounding 49-20 victory.
The win clinched the Knights (8-1, 4-0) at least a share of the CCAL title and put them in position to claim an outright league crown with a victory at Pitman (3-5, 2-2) next week.
“One more; we have to finish now,” Downey coach Jeremy Plaa said. “This has been the goal, to win the title, so we’ll be happy with a share for now, but we want to finish off next week.”
Downey quarterback Conner Stoddard was his usual proficient self against Gregori, completing 15 of 21 passes for 222 yards and five touchdowns. He also scored a touchdown on a 1-yard quarterback sneak.
It was a sparkling effort by the Knights’ 6-foot-1 junior, who runs the Downey offense with precision and poise. His backfield ball fakes fooled Gregori defenders on several occasions, leaving receivers wide open.
“He’s a field general,” Plaa said of Stoddard. “He’s understanding what we do more and more every week. We have a lot of confidence in what he’s doing and he loves the game of football. We’re excited he’s doing well.”
Gregori senior quarterback Cruz Marines was courageous in a losing cause, but most of his success came in the first half.
He passed for 131 yards and ran for 99 yards in the first two quarters. But he completed only two passes for 13 yards and ran for 33 yards in the second half.
Marines’ dazzling 39-yard touchdown run in the second quarter was the highlight of the night for the Jaguars.
“I really feel like we just ran out of gas,” said Gregori coach Lamar Wallace, whose team plays host to Turlock next week. “We’re pretty thin numbers-wise right now and missing some guys ... guys got banged up in (this) game.
“Just too many mistakes.”
Among those errors were a fumble, several penalties and some critical errors on special teams.
Poor kickoff coverage and nice returns by Downey’s Hayden Grant put the Knights inside Gregori territory twice in the first half, leading to scores.
In the second half, the Jaguars had two bad punt snaps and a bad PAT snap.
Those were way too many mistakes to make against Stoddard, who looks like he knows the Downey offense like the back of his hand.
“I’m very comfortable (running the offense) and that’s because of what we’ve done in the summer,” Stoddard said. “The system that (the coaches) put in and all the reps we got made me comfortable.”
The Knights moved the ball pretty much at will throughout, with Gregori’s defense forcing Downey to punt only twice. Junior running back Kimoni Ragland led the Downey ground attack, running for 72 yards on 14 carries.
Braden Sanchez and Camden Rush each caught two of Stoddard’s touchdown passes.
This story was originally published October 22, 2021 at 11:56 PM.
