California High rides a balanced offense to a comfortable win at Granada
LIVERMORE – The California High School football team fired on all cylinders in a 38-7 victory over host Granada on Friday night.
California (4-1), 16th in the Bay Area News Group rankings, was balanced offensively in its dismantling of the Matadors (2-4). Junior Grizzlies quarterback Jayden Macedo connected with six different receivers for his 195 yards passing. Four Cal ball-carriers rushed for more than 40 yards, including Macedo (42). The Grizzlies scored on six of their first seven possessions.
Defensively, the Grizzlies limited Granada to 159 total yards, including 23 yards passing. The Matadors’ only touchdown occurred with two minutes and 45 seconds left in the game.
On special teams, Cal’s Jayden Shah was perfect with his kicks, converting all five of his point-after-touchdown attempts and nailing a 28-yard field goal on the last play of the first half.
“I thought our guys came out focused,” said California coach Danny Calcagno, whose squad had a bye last week. “We had a good week of practice, they put the work in and executed what we needed to do.”
Macedo completed 15 of his 20 attempts, threw three touchdowns and no interceptions.
“Jayden’s been doing awesome for us,” Calcagno said. “Every week, he’s getting better. He’s feeling more comfortable back there.”
Devan Love also had an outstanding game for Cal. The junior rushed for a game-high 95 yards and had a team-leading 69 receiving yards, including a 33-yard touchdown reception in which he timed his jump perfectly to nab the ball on a downfield pass from Macedo.
Cal opened the game by marching 81 yards to score on a 16-yard dart from Macedo to Cole Fokas. In the first quarter, Macedo completed his first six passing attempts of the game to six different receivers.
After a three-and-out by Granada, California drove 59 yards to the Granada 3 before failing to convert a fourth-down play. But the rest of the Grizzlies’ drives would result in scores until their final drive of the game with less than 90 seconds remaining.
After the touchdown pass from Macedo to Love gave California a two-touchdown lead with 5:01 left in the first half, the Grizzlies got the ball back in the red zone after a fourth-down run by Granada in the punting formation failed to pick up a first down. On the next play, Macedo found Nabi Wahab for a 16-yard catch-and-run touchdown. Wahab finished with a game-high five receptions for 49 yards.
Cal ended the first half scoring with Shah’s field goal, then the Grizzlies’ Nicholas Boudreau reached the end zone on runs of 35- and 8-yards to finish his team’s scoring. The junior rushed for 47 yards in the game, and teammate Sayyidi Abdul-Kareem added 56 yards on the ground.
Granada broke the shutout with a three-yard touchdown run by Quinn Boyd. Teammate AJ Martin led the Matadors in rushing with 80 yards.
Matadors coach Marc Moses said his squad was missing five starters on both sides of the ball, including all three defensive linemen.
“Had a lot of injuries,” he said. “That’s no excuse anyway. They had our number tonight.”