Trabuco Hills rallies to win late

OC Varsity
12-04-2009

TUSTIN-The Trabuco Hills Mustangs entered the fourth quarter of their CIF-SS Southwest Division semifinal game against Tustin Friday night trailing by a touchdown.

Trabuco Hills responded by rallying and scoring 17 fourth-quarter points to defeat host Tustin, 24-14.

"We tell our kids all of the time, that if you keep it close to the fourth quarter, what you do in the weight room is going to pay off," Coach Jason Negro said.

Those words proved to be true.

"I think we wore on them a little bit," Negro said. "They have a lot of kids who play both ways, and we platoon pretty much our entire team."

Tustin, the No. 2 seed in the division, finished the season at 11-2. Trabuco Hills (12-1) is the third seed.

The Mustangs will face either La Habra or Cypress in the Southwest Division final Saturday at Angel Stadium.

La Habra defeated Trabuco Hills in last year's semifinals, 27-22.

The Mustangs will be making their first finals appearance since 2007. That was when the Mustangs were in the Southern Division.

The Trabuco Hills defense helped engineer the comeback with its work against the run and Tustin's star running back Anthony Wilkerson.

Wilkerson rushed for 120 yards in the first half. The Mustangs held him to 46 in the second half.

He finished with 166 rushing yards to give him 2,843 for the season. His total moves him into second place on the county's single-season rushing list.

"We're real good on defense," Negro said. "We don't get a whole lot of credit; we're young, but we did a good job tonight of keeping Anthony (Wilkerson) from getting big runs."

Wilkerson's longest run of the game was a 36-yard gain in the first quarter.

One of the biggest plays by the defense came midway through the fourth quarter.

Trabuco Hills had just taken a 17-14 lead on a 19-yard field goal by Mitch Murar in the quarter.

The Tillers, who had a touchdown drive that took 5:53 in the third quarter, went to work from their 20.

However, on fourth-and-2 from the 28, the Mustang defense, led by linebacker Griffin Balmer and Kevin Ritz stopped Wilkerson for no gain.

"Eleven hats to the ball, every play," Balmer said. "Swarming to the ball ... We had to play our hardest on every play. This could have been our last game, and we didn't want that.

"We went into halftime and we knew that we had to give it second effort. We knew that if we could shut them out and make them go three-and-out, then we could do it."

Trailing 14-7 entering the fourth quarter, Trabuco Hills running back Shane DeCillo tied the game at 14-14 on a 42-yard run with 11:10 remaining in the game.

DeCillo also added a 30-yard touchdown run late in the game.

He finished with 117 rushing yards. Dylan Buononato rushed for 87. The majority came in the second half for both.

"We told the kids that they had to continue to believe in what we're doing," Negro said. "Going to Angel Stadium was a goal of ours. Last year in the losing locker room at La Habra (in the semifinals), we said that we going to get there and the kids believed in that and never gave up."