Centennial of Corona scored on its first three possessions Thursday night at Orange Coast College and led Servite 21-0 early in the second quarter. The final was 41-21.
Here is the number that matters more. From 21-0 on, Servite outscored Centennial 21-20.
That is not a moral victory and Servite would not call it one. It is the difference between a team that got run off the field by our national No. 8 and a team that got caught cold at the start of a new head coach's first game and then played even with one of the best programs in California for the rest of the night. We ranked Servite eighth in Southern California three days ago and said in print that it was the widest split in the state. Thursday did not settle that argument. It complicated it.
The first three drives
Jaden Jefferson did all of it. The senior quarterback, a Hawaii commit who transferred in from Cathedral, ran it in from two yards out, then threw a long touchdown to Quentin Hale, then found Hale again from twelve. Three drives, three scores, 21-0, and Servite had barely touched the ball.
Hale is the other half of that Cathedral transfer, a USC commit, and he finished with seven catches for 159 yards and both of his touchdowns in the first half. One of them he took down with one hand. Jefferson finished 19 of 24 for 286 yards and added two rushing scores.
Then Centennial stopped scoring. After Hale's second touchdown the Huskies did not put another point on the board until the third quarter, in part because they kept stepping on their own drives. They finished with 15 penalties for 108 yards, including holding calls that wiped out big plays and false starts traced to a last-minute change at center. One of those flags took a touchdown off the board on a lateral before halftime.
Servite got on the board when Cinco Kennett ran it in from five with 2:06 left in the half. Twenty-one to seven, and the game the Friars actually wanted to play had started.
The rest of it
Jefferson ran in an 18-yarder and Braylin Drake scored from two, with the extra point sailing wide, and Centennial led 34-7. Drake finished with 67 yards, Malaki Davis added 50, and the Huskies ran for more than 250 as a team. That committee is the thing about this Centennial team that should worry everybody else in the Southern Section. It is not one back. It is four or five of them and an offensive line that made a Trinity League front look average.
Jorden Wells answered with a 55-yard touchdown run, the junior's best moment in a night where he carried it for more than 110 yards, and Servite went to the fourth quarter down 34-14. Parker Covin capped a 12-play, 71-yard drive from a yard out with 8:48 left, and it was 34-21 with plenty of clock.
Servite forced a punt on fourth and ten. Then a roughing-the-punter penalty gave Centennial the ball back, and Kennie Leggett ran in a 16-yarder with 1:17 remaining for the final margin.
So even the last touchdown on the scoreboard came off a Servite mistake rather than a Centennial drive against a defense that had stopped bending.
What Servite could not do
Throw it.
Gino Wang, the junior transfer from JSerra making his first start, went 14 of 29 for 90 yards. Benjamin Harris caught seven of them for 52. All three Servite touchdowns came on the ground, one in each quarter after the first.
That is the honest limitation, and it is the thing that has to change before the Friars' ranking is defensible over a full season. A team that can only move the ball one way against good defensive fronts does not survive a Trinity League schedule. Rick Garretson, a Servite alum who was an All-CIF player here as a senior and then coached fifteen years on this staff before leaving for Arizona, came back from Chandler in February to take the head job. He inherited a run game that works and a passing game that has to be built in front of him.
What it does to our board
Centennial holds at national No. 8 and SoCal No. 3, and if anything Thursday argued the national number is light. Matt Logan has more than 300 wins and ten Southern Section titles, and this is the most complete opening night his program has had in years.
Servite holds at SoCal No. 8, and we are not moving it on this result. We ranked the Friars where we did knowing the LA Times had them 15th. A three-score hole against our No. 3 followed by three quarters of even football is not evidence that the number was wrong. It is not evidence that it was right, either.
The 28th settles more than Thursday did. Servite goes to Murrieta Valley, which is the kind of game an eighth-ranked SoCal team is supposed to win and win clearly. Centennial gets Santa Margarita, our SoCal No. 2 and the defending state Open Division champion, and that game will tell us whether the Huskies belong higher than eighth nationally.
Two Thursdays, two answers. The board waits for the second one.
