State-bound: Why Acalanes didn’t let late-season loss derail championship run
With the playoffs getting ready to start, Acalanes coach Floyd Burnsed had to remind his players that everything they worked for was still possible.
The Lafayette school, one win from clinching its first outright league title in four decades, blew a two-touchdown fourth-quarter lead to rival Campolindo, losing the regular-season finale 25-24.
“That was a tough loss for us,” Burnsed said Sunday. “When you’re up 24-10 in the fourth quarter, you should win the ballgame. So that was a poor job of coaching.”
Since then, Burnsed and his staff have been on their game.
“We still ended up with the (shared) league championship, we still ended up with the automatic berth to the playoffs,” Burnsed said. “So everything was still in front of us to achieve.”
Once the playoffs started, Acalanes obliterated competition on the way to its first North Coast Section title, routing Mt. Diablo, Vallejo and defending 4-A state champion San Marin by an average of 32 points per game.
Acalanes will play Birmingham-Lake Balboa, a school famous for being the location of several hit music videos and producing several acclaimed actors, for the 3-AA championship in Mission Viejo on Saturday.
The way Birmingham won the SoCal championship 30-28 over Del Norte-San Diego last week seemed like something pulled straight out of a Hollywood script. On the last play of the game, Kingston Tisdell threw a desperation pass deep to Peyton Waters.
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The receiver tipped the ball to Devyn Jackson, who ran it in for a touchdown with no time left on the clock.
“It was all desperation and worked out in our favor,” Waters told the Los Angeles Times. “That’s why you don’t give up, even on the last play, when you’re down.”
Burnsed’s first NorCal title, which Acalanes easily won 49-14 over Escalon, didn’t require any such late-game miracles.
After that dominant showing, Burnsed briefly reminisced about his Miramonte teams of the 1980s and 1990s, which won a host of section titles but never got a chance to play for NorCal or state glory because the extended postseason didn’t start until 2006.
“We were big, strong and kind of ran people over,” Burnsed said about his Miramonte squads. “This team is more finesse, and smaller.”
Acalanes has a physical line and a punishing ground attack, but it hasn’t needed to overpower opponents to win games.
The Dons can and will just outrun them.
Acalanes will bring elite speed to Mission Viejo on Saturday morning, and that’s backed up by statistics.
Senior receivers Paul Kuhner and Trevor Rogers were part of the school’s 4×100 relay team that took silver at the CIF state track and field championships last spring.
That athleticism translates to the football field, where the duo has combined for 1,642 receiving yards and 22 touchdowns on a blistering 17.3 yards per reception.
“It’s paramount to what we do, it seriously is,” Kuhner said about being a two-sport athlete. “It helps out a ton.”
The duo also excels in the classroom and is headed to premier academic institutions after graduating.
Kuhner will attend Princeton, where he will run track and play football. Rogers has a 3.5 GPA and is committed to Cal, where his brother Chris, also an Acalanes alum, played wide receiver.
“My brother was here today, and he said to go win it for him, because they never got their chance,” Rogers said.
Birmingham coach Jim Rose doesn’t exactly have slowpokes on the outside and likes his team’s chances in a game that could turn into a track meet.
“We’ve got some guys that can run,” Rose said. “Speed-wise, I think it’s pretty even.”
After experiencing heartbreak and responding with a dominant playoff run, the speedy Dons know what they need to do to win the race to the program’s first state title.
“We’re going to stick to what we’ve been doing,” running back Jack Miller said. “It’s been working.”