Some league titles get decided in October with a shrug and a handshake. This one took ninety-eight points.
Mission Viejo, our No. 35 team in the country, beat San Juan Hills 54-44 on Friday night and won the Alpha League, per the Los Angeles Times and CalHiSports. Nobody on either side seemed interested in saving anything for later.
Two offenses, two different languages
San Juan Hills spoke through the air. Quarterback Parker Armstrong threw four touchdown passes, according to both the Times and CalHiSports, and for long stretches San Juan Hills looked like a team that could score from anywhere on the field.
Mission Viejo answered in a different dialect. It ran.
Carson Vandermade ran for three touchdowns. Jack Junker ran for two more, per both outlets, and each of them cleared 120 yards on the ground by either paper's count.
That's the whole game in two sentences, really. One team kept throwing haymakers. The other kept leaning on the same door until it gave.
Why the ground game won
There's an old argument in this sport about whether you'd rather have the quarterback who can beat you in four throws or the line that can beat you in forty snaps. Friday night made the case for the line.
Big plays through the air kept San Juan Hills in it all night. Long drives on the ground kept Mission Viejo in front. Each strike bought a few minutes of hope, and each march down the field answered it.
There's something fitting about a league race ending this way, loud and late and a little ragged. Titles are supposed to cost something. This one cost both defenses a long night.
Where they go next
Mission Viejo is headed to the Division 1 playoffs, per the Times and CalHiSports. The Times had Mission Viejo at 8-1 after the win, and CalHiSports agreed.
San Juan Hills has the kind of quarterback who makes a bracket committee nervous, and an offense that just put 44 on a nationally ranked team.
The neighborhood Mission Viejo is moving into is not a quiet one. Division 1 in the Southern Section is where the heavyweights live, several of them on our national board. Somewhere in that pile, a team whose two backs ran for five touchdowns in a title game is going to make somebody uncomfortable.
That's the thing about a rushing attack in November. It doesn't need the weather or the matchup to cooperate. It just needs five linemen who'd rather move people than chase them, and a couple of backs who don't mind the contact. Mission Viejo showed up with both.
The board
We have Mission Viejo 35th on the SPIN Power 100 and 13th on the Out West 25. A league title in a 98-point game is not the kind of result that pushes a team down. San Juan Hills isn't on either board. After Friday, it at least earned a mention in the room where those boards get built.
Ninety-eight points. One title.
The rest of the league can stop counting.
