MC football fighting to salvage season

Bob Casey said he’s about to find out which of his players want to be there.

The Merced College football team’s options have become limited after four straight losses, two to start Golden Coast Conference play. With four games to play, the Blue Devils (2-4, 0-2) could still turn in the school’s first winning season in 17 years. And Casey is quick to point out that all of the teams that were at least 6-4 a year ago went to a bowl games.

With only five NorCal American Division teams on pace to reach six wins, Casey could be right. But before MC can concern itself with running the table, it has to win a single game. A visit from 1-5 Gavilan to Stadium ’76 on Saturday night definitely looks like an opportunity to cure what ails the Blue Devils. Kickoff is set for 6 p.m.

“On paper, it looks like a good matchup, but the way we’re playing right now, we can’t take anything for granted,” Casey said. “Until we learn to stop shooting ourselves in the foot and keeping other teams in the game, there won’t be any easy weeks.

“We just haven’t been consistent enough throughout the whole game, particularly on offense. Which is kind of amazing considering the amount of yards we put up. But that inconsistency has hurt us in the red zone and it’s cost us games.”

The most recent loss, a 49-42 defeat at Monterey Peninsula, probably stings the most. It was MC’s third straight loss by seven points or less, decided by a kick return for a touchdown in the game’s final minute. While losses to Contra Costa and Hartnell in contests the Blue Devils should have won hurt, at least the talent of both teams was pretty even. The gulf in class between MC and the Lobos was much more pronounced.

“At the end of the day it comes down to desire,” Casey said. “We just haven’t been a mentally tough team. You can see the difference when we have a chance to sit them down and get their heads right in dominant first and third quarters. Then the other teams start chirping, we get out of our game plans and things start to unravel in the second and fourth quarters.

“That kick return is the perfect example. All we had to do was hold for a minute and then win it in overtime. They hadn’t returned a ball past the 25 all night and we had four guys there in position to make the play. We just took a play off and got burned for it.”

MC will try and right the ship against a Gavilan team that has been outscored 250-118.

If the Devils can recapture just a portion of what it did against the Rams a year ago, thing should go well. Merced set single-game school records for plays (91), rushing yards (518) and rushing attempts (82) in a 43-14 thumping.

“If we can’t clean things up, nothing else may matter,” Casey said of the 481 penalty yards his team has accumulated the last three weeks. “Gavilan got penalized for 163 yards last week. If we’re not careful, we could set some kind of record.

“We need to get back to just playing football. Run, throw, catch and tackle, and let the other stuff sort itself out. If we can do that, I believe we can turn things around the rest of the way.”

This story was originally published October 23, 2015 at 9:25 PM with the headline "MC football fighting to salvage season."