Pitman bowls over Golden Valley with run game

As soon as the Pitman offense found a rhythm Friday night, Golden Valley could do little to slow it down.

The Cougars managed a couple first-quarter stops, including a big fumble recovery deep in GV territory, but it only delayed the inevitable.

The Pride ground game found its legs late in the second quarter and Pitman scored on its final seven possessions to rout GV 56-20 at Joe Debely Stadium.

“They took it to us pretty good,” Golden Valley coach Dennis Stubbs said. “We showed some signs. We got a few stops and made them punt. We just couldn’t sustain it. Once they got the momentum going, nothing we did could get it back.

“We’re still a young team. We’re asking guys to do a lot of things out there for us, and it’s still a work in progress. But we’re still playing relevant football for the first time in a long time. We have two games to try and win, and we’ll bounce back at practice on Monday focused on doing that.”

If the Cougars (4-4, 1-2 Central California Conference) hope to win those final two games and secure their first playoff berth since 2006, they’ll need to shore up their run defense.

Pitman only completed one pass, going almost exclusively with its run game. The trio of Matt Parker (18 carries for 140 yards), Ryan Yniquez (11 for 89) and Titus Schammel (14 for 75) did the heavy lifting as the Pride (5-3, 2-1 CCC) pounded out 428 yards on the ground.

Golden Valley had trouble keeping pace, though it did score first.

A roughing-the-punter penalty extended the Cougars’ opening drive and Stubbs’ squad took full advantage.

Armando Muzquiz (14 of 27 for 209 yards) found Cadrian McDaniel (eight catches, 162 yards and a TD) for a 51-yard pass down the left sideline to give GV first-and-goal. Nick Lemas punched in a four-yard touchdown run on the next play to make it 7-0.

Pitman answered in just over two minutes, with Parker plunging in for a one-yard touchdown to tie it 7-7.

Schammel took over from there. The Pitman senior scored three of his five touchdowns in the second quarter to send the Pride into intermission with a 28-13 lead.

Isaiah Montanez provided Golden Valley’s only other first-half highlight. The junior returned his third kickoff for a touchdown this season, this time for 95 yards, to make it 14-13 in the second quarter. It was as close as the Cougars would get, however, with its offense repeatedly stalling.

Dropped passes, untimely false-start penalties and poor execution on third-and-short opportunities killed a number of drives throughout the game. And with each Pitman score, the GV offense pressed that much harder.

“We’ve felt like we’ve been on the cusp of really breaking out offensively for a couple weeks,” Muzquiz said. “I think it just comes down to concentration. We’re stopping ourselves with drops and missed blocks and penalties as much as any defense is.

“We’ve got two games to put it together. Making the playoffs means everything to us, so we’ll be ready to go at practice on Monday.”

Pitman’s three-play scoring drive to open the second half all but put the game away. Muzquiz hit McDaniel for a 28-yard touchdown pass in the second half, but the Pride scored on all four of their possessions after the break to pull away.

This story was originally published October 24, 2015 at 2:00 AM with the headline "Pitman bowls over Golden Valley with run game."