MC football opens conference play with defending champs

Randy Jones said the Merced College football team is humbling itself.

The freshman quarterback acknowledged that heads had gotten a little big after a pair of pretty dominant victories to open the season. Consecutive losses in winnable games have deflated those egos considerably and forced the Blue Devils to regroup.

“Our coaches do a good job of rallying us up and getting us focused on the next game,” Jones said. “We started 2-0 and I think we got a little overconfident. We probably didn’t get after it as hard at practice and weren’t as focused as we needed to be.

“Experience is a good teacher, and we’ve been brought back to Earth. Now we have to get focused up for the start of conference and start doing the things we did well the first two weeks.”

The Blue Devils start Golden Coast Conference play in a similar position as last year, taking on an undefeated Hartnell squad. The defending league champs are ranked No. 23 in the state after last week’s 23-0 victory over Cabrillo.

Despite the ranking, the Panthers don’t look nearly as strong as they did a season ago when MC handed them a 42-28 loss at home. The Devils will try to repeat the feat when Hartnell visits Stadium ’76 today. Kickoff is set for 6 p.m.

“There’s no doubt they probably aren’t as strong a team as they were a year ago, but they’re still the defending champs,” Merced coach Bob Casey said. “They went to a bowl game and they’re coming in undefeated. If we want to accomplish the goals we have, it starts with beating Hartnell.

“They’re a team that doesn’t make mistakes, so we need to be disciplined. We need to clean up the things that have cost us that last two weeks.”

Little seems to have changed since last season in terms of the GCC pecking order. Hartnell (4-0, 1-0 GCC), Reedley (3-1, 1-0) West Hills (3-1, 1-0) and Merced look like the conference frontrunners. While Monterey Peninsula (2-2, 0-1), Cabrillo (1-3, 0-1) and Gavilan (0-4, 0-1) will likely comprise the bottom half of the league.

A pair of single-score losses denied MC at least a share of the title a season ago. With the Golden Coast looking a little down across the board, there’s no reason to think the Blue Devils can’t run the table.

“We know we’re a good football team,” Jones said. “We know we have some talented guys that can do big things. We just need to show it more consistently.

“I need to be more consistent. This defense has been great all year and this offense hasn’t seen how good it can be yet. Most importantly, we need to finish games.”

This story was originally published October 2, 2015 at 6:35 PM with the headline "MC football opens conference play with defending champs."