GILROY—Gilroy was hoping its first home game would be a close, exciting game. Unfortunately for the Mustangs, they didn’t get what they hoped for.
Gilroy (0-3) suffered another tough loss, this time at the hands of the emotionally charged Half Moon Bay. The Cougars—reeling from the loss of their defensive coordinator, Rocky Perry, who died Sept. 13 following two heart attacks in two weeks—beat Gilroy 42-6.
The Mustangs lone score came with just over five minutes to play in the second quarter. Gilroy trailed 23-0 before going on a 13-play, 47-yard march down field. It ended with David Munoz finding Riley Filice-Hollar in the endzone for a 13-yard touchdown. The extra point attempt was mishandled, but the team got on the board to cut Half Moon Bay’s lead to 23-6.
“I was hoping for a close game,” Munoz said. “It wasn’t though—we weren’t ready. …(We made) small mistakes, but we’ve just got to fix them. We’ve just got to fix them and get going.”
Munoz was much improved from last week when he was just 6 for 27 for 30 yards. The junior completed 16 passes on 26 attempts for 144 yards and a touchdown. He was also sacked twice and saw several errors on the snap—one of which was derailed a promising drive.
Gilroy got the ball at midfield late in the fourth quarter, but a sack, a penalty and a bad snap resulted in a loss of 37 yards.
“We think we’re doing everything right, putting people in the right place at practice and then we get out here and they don’t know where to line up, they don’t have a clue what they’re doing,” Gilroy coach Brian Boyd said. “Things really have to change.”
The Mustangs’ struggles were apparent from the beginning as they fumbled, but recovered, on their first three possessions. The team fumbled five times in the game, one of which was recovered by Half Moon Bay at Gilroy’s 10-yard-line.
Gilroy had just recovered a Cougar fumble to start the third quarter which set it up at Half Moon Bay’s 27-yard-line and got it all the way to the 5 when the fumble occurred. The visitors’ momentum was short lived, however, as Antonio Andrade picked off Shane Acton to set the Mustangs up just outside the redzone at the 24.
But penalties would prevent Gilroy from reaching the endzone and it turned the ball over on downs.
The Mustangs were plagued by penalties all game. They had 10 flags accounting for 95 yards.
“We don’t know what we’re doing; we don’t have a clue what we’re doing—penalties, everybody’s calling plays, switching plays,” Boyd said. “We’re lost; we are absolutely lost.”
It took just three plays for the Cougars to get on the board. Acton connected with Matt Spigelman for a 68-yard catch and run touchdown and Acton ran it in for the 2-point conversion to put the visitors ahead 8-0 with just over eight to play in the first quarter.
The Cougars would score again on their next possession, capitalizing off a 15-yard Mustang penalty that put them at Gilroy’s 24-yard-line. Tobias Leonardos had four straight carries for Half Moon Bay, including a one-yard run for the touchdown with 3:22 left in the first quarter. Spigelman carried it in for the 2-point conversion and the Cougars jumped ahead 16-0.
“The D-line isn’t not coming off the ball, me included,” senior defensive tackle Darius Alexander-Jones said. “We’re just not making plays, we’re not wrapping up. We need to hit more; we need to come out more aggressive and hyped. We need to come out with some swag to us.”
Gilroy will be back in action at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 26 to host Piedmont Hills. But before it does, Alexander-Jones said the team needs to do some soul searching.
“We don’t have enough heart on the team,” he said. “We need to dig deep and pull out whatever we have inside of us to get the ‘W’.”
