(Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)
PUEBLO — Pueblo East quarterback Luc Andrada calmly walked over to his bench. He placed his helmet down and turned his attention back to the field. His day was done. He would take three more snaps in the game, but they would all be in the victory formation.
Pueblo East is on its way back into the Class 3A football semifinals after a convincing 42-0 win over Discovery Canyon on Saturday at Dutch Clark Stadium.
Andrada accounted for four touchdowns, two on the ground and two through the air. But he couldn’t care less about his stats. The only numbers that mattered were the ones keeping the Eagles (10-2 overall) state championship hopes alive.
“There’s no better feeling than lining up in the victory formation against an opponent,” Andrada said. “This one meant so much to us because we thought back to Week 5 when they put it on us with the triple-option. We knew we were a different team now.”
They were different in several ways, the main one being they were fully healthy. In the first matchup between the Eagles and the Thunder (9-3), UCLA commit Kain Medrano was stuck on the sideline with a shoulder injury. He could only watch as the Discovery Canyon running attack pounded the East defense.
(Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)
“It was real tough,” Medrano said. “I felt like we were prepared going into that first game. The score didn’t show that. I was trying to help out as much as I could by coaching those young guys up, but that game didn’t end up the way we wanted it to.”
The Eagles made sure to get their standout receiver involved early. He took a jet sweep 40 yards to set up an Andrada rushing touchdown. East then held forced a Thunder punt and Medrano took it 73 yards to put the Eagles up 14-0 just seven minutes into the game.
Discovery Canyon’s approach defensively was to try and limit Medrano and make Andrada comfortable, the same way they had in the regular season win. Coach Shawn Mitchell essentially pulled up the game plan they had put together for the first meeting when it was assumed that Medrano would be playing.
“We tried to use a similar game plan that we would’ve used if he had played the first time around,” Mitchell said. “You have to account for Kain. We needed to have another body with him.”
For the most part, the Thunder did a good job in the first half of limiting Medrano’s targets. But Andrada just looked elsewhere. He targeted Marvin London Jr. often and also found Joe Padula for a 17-yard touchdown pass to make it 21-0.
It was clear at that point that the Eagles were far more ready for this game than they were the Week 5 showdown.
“We weren’t prepared the first time and that’s on me,” East coach Andy Watts said. “I promised the boys from that point on that myself and the coaching staff would have them prepared and just asked them to trust us. The boys have done a great job of that.”
It took just two plays at the start of the third quarter for the Eagles to find the end zone once again. That quick score squashed any shot Discovery Canyon had of seizing early momentum in the second half.
The combined rushing attack of Zach Anderson and Marshall Pike that had been so dominant against the Eagles earlier in the year combined for just 75 total yards.
The Eagles now advance to the semifinals where they’ll see No. 3 Erie, the very team that knocked East out of the playoffs a year ago.
If the indication from last week to this week is saying anything, it looks as though East is getting better as they get deeper into the playoffs.
“That’s the plan,” Watts said. “That’s how it’s supposed to go. I expect us to continue to get better and now the task at hand is a rematch with Erie.”
Like the game against Discovery Canyon, it’s a rematch they fully intend to win. It’s easy to enjoy a 42-point win in the quarterfinals, but this isn’t the end game. As Andrada made his way back to the locker room he was already speaking of next week’s game.
And in the same calm demeanor that he watched the fourth quarter with, he pointed out that the Eagles didn’t come this far just to come this far.
(Dan Mohrmann/CHSAANow.com)