Corsairs hope to rebound this week
By DANIEL ARCHULETA Managing Editor
SMC Talk about a tale of two football teams.
Santa Monica College is coming off a 3- 27 loss to Orange Coast College in the season opener. Their opponent, Cerritos College, trounced an overmatched East Los Angeles College, 65-7, last week.
At first glance, it looks like the game Saturday at Cerritos could get out of hand pretty quickly.
For SMC head coach Robert Taylor, he sees it as another opportunity to test his team’s mettle and their dedication to the game plan he spent the entire summer putting into place.
“We have a lot of things we’re working on to get right with this team,” he said. “One football game isn’t going to make a season.”
But, if things don’t work out for the Corsairs, Taylor isn’t afraid to make some major changes on offense. Sophomore quarterback Luqman Nasouf was anything but sharp last week tossing a pair of interceptions, one of which was returned for a touchdown.
The Corsairs led 3-0 at the half, with its defense stifling a quality OCC offense. While the SMC offense didn’t excel, it did out gain the opponent and controlled the clock during the first half. The second half was another story.
On offense, the team stalled out and were forced to punt the ball away after a number of three down and out situations. The extra time on the field left the defense winded and at a loss for answers.
“When things go bad, every coach in America looks at the QB first.” — Taylor said regarding his signal caller
“I would call it first game jitters, but we expect to have more game experience with him,”
In this week’s game against Cerritos, things don’t appear to be getting any easier.
The Falcons scored eight different ways against ELAC and sailed to victory.
If the Corsairs hope to compete, the offense will have to fill the scorebook with big numbers. To that end, Taylor is steadfast in his commitment to his overall game plan, yet concedes that he’ll have to pare down the playbook. He wants to keep things simple for a team that failed to grasp some of the finer points of the offense.
“We need the offense to catch up,” he said.
Cerritos’ head coach Frank Mazzotta believes the OCC game could have been the result of a young team struggling to understand the plays. He’s watched tape of the game and was left with a sense that the Corsairs are athletic enough to put aside the loss and cause some problems for his Falcons.
“They had a chance to beat Orange Coast,” Mazzotta said. “It was just the first game, it’s hard to tell why they lost.”
He was impressed by the way Corsair running backs Deron Bartholomew and Cedric Hayes ran the ball and expects more of the same Saturday. He expects the SMC running game to keep them in the game and is excited to see how his defense reacts to adversity.
“The scary part of our situation, and I think it can hurt us, is that we didn’t get to play our good kids as much as we like,” he said of the ELAC game. “Some guys only played eight or nine plays. Our older kids need that playing time.”
The game got out of hand so quickly, that he rested his quarterback, sophomore Jeff Fischer, the entire second half and most of his starting defensive lineman didn’t return to the game after the first quarter.
“Everybody played good,” he said, “but I don’t have a good handle on how things are going to go on Saturday.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 13, 2008. Read the original PDF.