Friday morning we wrote that St. John Bosco at Pittsburg was the cleanest test of Southern California against Northern California on the schedule, and then we wrote this: we would be surprised if this one is close.
Be surprised. Pittsburg led 14-13 at halftime.
Bosco won 26-14, which is the number that will go in the record book and the number that will go on the boards, and it is also the least interesting thing that happened in the East Bay on Friday night.
The first half belonged to the home team
Bosco turned the ball over twice early. Pittsburg took the gift and made something of it, which is not what a team is supposed to be able to do against this defense, and went to the locker room in front by a point.
Cal-Hi Sports, watching the same game we were, called it a strong effort for Pittsburg and put the emphasis on the first half. That is the correct emphasis.
Understand what that means for a program that came into Friday as our NorCal No. 6. Pittsburg opened the season 40-7 over Monterey Trail and then spent 24 minutes ahead of a team that had beaten everyone it played this season except Bishop Gorman. Nobody in Contra Costa County needs us to tell them Pittsburg is good. Everyone else might.
Then Bosco stopped playing along
The second half was 13-0.
That is the whole story of the night in four characters. Bosco scored 13 after the break and Pittsburg scored nothing, and a one-point deficit became a 12-point win without anything that looked like drama.
Bosco's own account called it a hard-fought battle and thanked Pittsburg for the atmosphere, which is the kind of thing programs say and is also, on the evidence, true.
What we get wrong and what we get right
We had this wrong on Friday morning, and the way we had it wrong is worth keeping.
We were not wrong that Bosco would win. We were wrong about the shape. We looked at a Bosco team whose only loss this season is to Bishop Gorman, put it next to a Pittsburg team that had played one meaningful opponent, and decided the gap would show up early and stay. The gap showed up late. That is a different fact about both teams than the one we published.
For Bosco it says the defense travels 400 miles and works in the second half, which is the half that decides games in December.
For Pittsburg it says the NorCal board is not settled. A team that hangs a 14-13 halftime on St. John Bosco has told us something we did not know at 5 p.m.
Boards are Monday. Everything above is Friday night, not a ranking.
What we could not confirm
The scoring plays. No newsroom has filed a full sequence and we are not building one out of a scoreboard graphic.
Individual statistics on either side. Records after the game. Attendance.
The halftime score reached us through five separate accounts on X and through our own editor, and no staffed newsroom has printed it yet. We are running it on that basis and we are telling you that is the basis.
