Casa Grande Earns High Praise in Football Defeat

Even in defeat, Casa Grande High football coach Trent Herzog and his team got the ultimate compliment Friday night.

The Gauchos had just lost, 26-21, to top-seeded Concord and its star quarterback, Ricky Lloyd, in as good a high school football game as you'll see. Down 26-0 in the North Coast Section Division 2 semifinal, Casa had staged a furious fourth-quarter comeback to turn a rout into a nail-biter.

Afterward, Herzog approached Lloyd to congratulate him and was surprised to hear that Casa's defense was the best Lloyd had seen all year. "You guys had me confused," Lloyd told him.

High praise, indeed, and the numbers back it up. Before Friday, the fewest points Concord had scored in a game this season was 36, and it had scored at least 64 four times. It also was the first time Lloyd had thrown two interceptions in a game.

Lloyd isn't just any hotshot high school quarterback, either. He has broken the East Bay single-season passing-yards record and is on the verge of becoming the all-time leader in Northern California history.

So for the Gauchos to make Lloyd and his team sweat more than a little made defeat a little easier to take. Casa did what so many other teams couldn't do, and it did it in a situation where many teams would just fold.

Herzog was thinking the worst when Concord scored twice late in the first half, scored again early in the third quarter and recovered an onside kick.

"I thought, 'Oh boy, here we go,' " he said.

But that's about the time that Casa quarterback Nick Sherry, who threw an interception on the first play of the game and another one on his first pass of the second half, stepped up and carried the Gauchos on his shoulders. He threw three touchdown passes in the final 9 1/2 minutes.

"They gave him a look he hadn't seen all year, coverage-wise," said Herzog, who made a halftime adjustment to combat that and also found success, much to his surprise, running the ball outside against a Concord defense known for its speed.

"After it was 12-0 everyone knew we still had a chance -- we just had to score some points," Herzog said. "In the first half we had Javonie Oden open for a touchdown and just didn't connect it. We just adjusted and kept the kids calm. It's just a real good group of kids. They showed their character and never quit."

So what does this mean for the future? Lots of positive things, Herzog said.

For one, the younger players got a ton of experience. Herzog said it's only the fourth time in school history Casa has played 13 games in a season, and he has some talent coming back.

One of the most experienced returnees is the 280-pound tackle/nose guard, Thomas Kupelian. He'll anchor the offensive line with center Sean Markovich, and end Luis Araiza will join him on the defensive front. Cornerback Steven Bentley and linebackers R.J. Busse and Weston Bryan are due to return on defense.

The quarterback figures to be Cole Boggs, the varsity backup this season, or JuJuan Lawson, the junior varsity QB. "Whoever our quarterback is next year," Herzog said, "will be real athletic and more of a running threat (than Sherry). We'll run more plays with them out of the spread to make use of that."

Now that the season is over, it's time for Sherry to officially decide whether he indeed will attend Colorado, to which he is orally committed. The school changed coaches after Sherry's original announcement, and the new man is Jon Embree, a former Colorado tight end. Sherry also is being pursued by Arizona and Washington.

Herzog, meanwhile, can look to next season with a sense of satisfaction after a year to remember. What will he recall most about this team? "Their practice habits and their leadership," he said.

But what also stood out was the fact that they didn't let 26-0 turn into 52-0 against a team that had everything going for it -- including the widely renowned best quarterback in the Bay Area this year.

"I'm real proud of our players and our coaches," Herzog said. "We stayed with it. We kept fighting. We just ran out of time. The last quarter we played to our potential and our full capability."

That's all a coach can ask ... and it's something that opposing quarterbacks tend to notice, too.