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South Pasadena Tigers were frustrated Thursday, suffering a disappointing loss to Eagle Rock 35-17. The game got off to a strong start with what Coach Chi called, “the best screen play I think I’ve seen us do” with Sidney Luna-Long taking said screen play and running it for an exhilarating 72 yard touchdown in the second quarter. Luna-Long said, “the line got out there with some good blocks, Justin got me the ball and I saw an open field. I just had to make one move and I was gone. Matt Walker made a key block on that one.”
After the Eagles tied it up in the second quarter, Tigers went into a final first half drive after an interception by Dorian Torres. Justin Huff put up 3 more points on an impressive 45 yard field goal bringing the score to 10-7 Tigers going into halftime.
Second half the narrative soon shifted with the Eagles dominating and the Tigers making several errors leading to no less than four turnovers, three of which resulted in touchdowns for the Eagles. It was too much for the Tigers to come back from however, they kept fighting through their final drive with Gavin Chi running in a final touchdown putting 7 more points on the board for South Pasadena.
Luna-Long said, “they are a physical football team, they were dominating the line of scrimmage, putting a lot of pressure on the quarterback. We had four turnovers on offense resulting in three scores. They played hard. But we’re going to bounce back, work hard; we’re going to fight and hit hard next week.”
Coach Chi said, “we played toe to toe with those guys in the first half, but having some guys hurt on our team, they really exploded us on their D-line on our offensive guys. That hurt our game plan. They played a finesse game with a perimeter game, quick passes, reverses and trick plays; whereas we thought we could go toe to toe physically but their blitzing got us out of our game plan a bit.”
Chi went on to say,“gotta give credit to Eagle Rock; those guys are physical and hit our guys hard. We answered back at first but after a few mistakes, things went downhill fast and the score became lopsided. We’re going to give our guys some time to heal up to get ready for league next week and they’ll be back strong.”
Next up for the Tigers will be against Monrovia Friday October 6th at Monrovia in conjunction with SPHS Color Day.
