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Titans will remember the Cats after Thursday's f-s blowout
By Dick Sparrer
Remember the Titans? Well, they won't soon forget the Wildcats.
The Gunn frosh-soph football players were no doubt seeing orange and black in their dreams--make that nightmares--last week after Los Gatos crushed the Titans 47-0 in the De Anza Division of the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League.
The Wildcats swarmed all over the Titans, allowing Gunn just 5 yards rushing and sacking the quarterback six times.
"We swarmed to the ball and put constant pressure on the quarterback," said Los Gatos coach Dale Gustafson after the Cats' second league win in as many weeks. "Our defense played a great game."
The defense also got in on the scoring when Danny Bates scooped up a fumble and raced 45 yards for a touchdown.
But that wasn't all Bates did in the Thursday afternoon game. He also ran back a Gunn punt 55 yards for a score. Gustafson called the run "spectacular," indicating that Bates broke four tackles on his trip to the end zone.
But Los Gatos showed off more than just its defense in the win over the Titans. Quarterback Kyle Jensen also led a rather impressive offensive attack for the Cats.
"[Jensen] had his most productive passing day of the year," said Gustafson of his sophomore quarterback, who hooked up on 8 of 10 passes for 125 yards and a couple of touchdowns to Marc Ericson and Patrick McDonald.
Jensen completed four passes to Ericson for 35 yards, hit Matt Miguel twice for 23 yards and went to McDonald once for 15 and Carlos Bravo once for 22. McDonald also completed a 12-yard toss to Nick Reimnitz.
Miguel led the ground attack with four carries for 40 yards and a couple of TDs. Bravo had a 16-yard touchdown run among his 28 yards and four carries.
John Davidge supported with 34 yards on five tries, Bates ran twice for 31 yards, Ivan Batinich had three totes for 17 yards, Eric Pape picked up 13 yards on two carries and McDonald added 12 yards on two tries.
Bravo and David Holtzman were in on seven tackles apiece to lead the defensive charge.
Los Gatos, now 2-0 in the division and 4-1 for the year, will be home Oct. 12 to face Wilcox at 5:15 p.m.
"We play a very good Wilcox team," said Gustafson, "one we have to beat to defend our league championship." The young Cats had opened the league season with a solid 26-6 win over Palo Alto.
The Wildcats were up just 6-0 at intermission, but scored on their first three possessions of the second half to roll to the victory.
Jensen tossed a 22-yard TD pass to Ericson in the first half to give the Cats the lead at the break. They hooked up again for an 11-yard scoring toss in the second half.
In between, Bates scored on runs of 36 and 45 yards, and the Cats were well on their way to the victory.
Bates finished the night with 129 yards on nine carries. Davidge supported with 76 yards on 11 tries and Bravo added 23 yards on three runs.
Jensen hit on 3 of 4 passes for 51 yards, hitting Ericson twice for 33 yards and two TDs and Bravo once for 18 yards.
Bates led the Wildcats with eight tackles, and Holtzman and Batinich were in on seven apiece. Omeed Ghaffarian and Ericson each sacked the Paly quarterback three times.
"I was very proud of our defense," said Gustafson. "We limited them to negative-16 yards rushing, which included six sacks. We gave up some yards passing, but overall our defense shut them down."
"This was a great game for us because we beat a good football team," added the coach. "We played with a lot of emotion and executed fairly well."
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
