Los Banos duo of Caballero and Lopez look to be breakout stars early in the season

Anthony Caballero and Antonio Lopez have given the Los Banos High football team a dynamic duo out of the backfield this season.

Which maybe unexpected after where both players were last season.

Caballero was the Tigers leading receiver last year as a junior. So far, he’s made a seamless transition to quarterback. Meanwhile, Lopez has come a long way from the sophomore who was more worried about playing time and carries last year. Unhappy with his workload, Lopez asked to move down to the junior varsity team midway through last season.

Lopez has matured and worked his way back out Los Banos coach Dustin Caropreso’s doghouse, scoring six touchdowns in the first two games.

Together they’ve helped the Tigers start the season 2-0 as they set to host Golden Valley (0-2) at Loftin Stadium on Friday night.

Kickoff is scheduled for 7 p.m.

“Both of them have done really well,” Caropreso said. “They’ve definitely taken it up a notch. Our O-line has a lot to do with it. It’s great having the two of them back there. If teams try to stop our quarterback we can give the ball to Antonio. If they want to stop Antonio, we can let (Caballero) run the ball or throw it. It’s hard to stop both of them. They feed off each other.”

Caropreso wasn’t sure Lopez was a good fit for the program after last season.

Lopez started the season on varsity as a sophomore and would have made a nice running back tandem with Christopher Kyles, who rushed for 1,071 yards.

Lopez’s request to put himself before the team last year didn’t sit well with Caropreso.

“To be honest, if he would have came back after last season and decided to move on into a different direction, I would have been fine with it. I was that (upset),” Caropreso said. “Antonio could have rushed for 1,500 yards for us last year if he would have stayed up. He definitely could have been the guy.”

Lopez immediately regretted the decision.

“I wanted more reps. I wanted more playing time,” Lopez said. “Looking back now, I feel I made a mistake because the stuff I know today, I would have learned last year. I’d be that much better. During the first game, after I moved down, I knew I screwed up. (Junior Varsity) wasn’t what I expected.”

Lopez knew he was in the doghouse going into the offseason. His only way out of it was to put his head down and go to work.

“He’s changed,” Caballero said. “From where he was as a sophomore it was, ‘I want the ball’ to now he’s like ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to win the game.’ He’s really a hard worker. During practice all he does is work hard. There is no practice speed for him. Everything is game speed for him.”

The change in attitude has led to success on the field as Lopez has carried the ball 55 times for 389 yards to go with his six touchdowns.

“He’s got great vision,” Caropreso said. “He’s learning what to do with our zone concepts. He’s taking what the defense gives him.”

Caballero has always been the type of player to do whatever the team needs. After playing quarterback as a freshman and sophomore, he transitioned to receiver last year and led the Tigers with 36 receptions for 314 yards.

He moved back to quarterback this year and has completed 26-of-36 passes for 376 yards and five touchdowns. He’s also rushed for five scores.

Caropreso compares him to a slightly smaller version of for Tigers quarterback Adam Herrera, who led Los Banos to a Western Athletic Conference championship his junior season in 2014.

“After last season we knew he was going to be our quarterback so we groomed him,” Caropreso said. “He’s done everything he’s needed to do. He worked hard all spring. He’s like Adam in that he can run and throw. He just stands 2 inches shorter.”

The toughest part of moving back to quarterback is being responsible for the entire offense. As a receiver he only had to worry about himself and the routes he had to run. As a quarterback he has to manage all the moving parts of the offense.

“It’s a long process,” Caballero said. “He had to go back to reading defenses. Reading the defensive line and how they are going to slant. How they are coming off the ball. I have to know how the linebackers are playing. Then I have to know what our receivers and running backs are doing. There’s a lot to remember.”

So far, so good for Caballero and the Tigers.

With so many new faces, Los Banos wasn’t projected as a contender in the WAC coming into the season. If the Tigers continue to rack up wins people will notice.

“To be honest, we prefer when people don’t talk about us,” Caropreso said. “Everybody was talking about us Adam and David Walker’s senior year (2015) and we laid an egg. The year we had Alec Barcellos nobody was talking about us and we won the WAC.”

This story was originally published September 7, 2017 at 1:42 PM with the headline "Los Banos duo of Caballero and Lopez look to be breakout stars early in the season."