KELSEYVILLE >> The Bass Bowl trophy has become a Kelseyville fixture, not that the Knights mind.
The trophy, awarded to the winner of the Clear Lake-Kelseyville varsity football game since 2010, is staying with the Knights yet again after their come-from-behind 42-21 victory over the Cardinals on Friday night in Kelseyville, a game that ended a whole lot better than it started for coach Erick Larsen’s squad.
In the process of winning their fifth straight Bass Bowl game and taking a 6-2 lead in the Bass Bowl series against their archrivals, the Knights (3-1 league, 4-2 overall) also knocked the Cardinals (3-1, 4-2) from the ranks of the league’s unbeaten and snapped their four-game winning streak. Needless to say, Kelseyville’s players were taking it all in and whooping it up at game’s end while hoisting the wooden Bass Bowl trophy following the presentation near midfield.
“It’s always fun to beat Lakeport but we’re looking for bigger and better things,” Larsen said with an eye toward the league race and the playoffs to follow. “We want to be the best football team we can be and we’re getting there. This is just one step in that direction. This is the type of team we can be.”
“We played great football for five minutes,” Clear Lake coach Mark Cory said of the Cardinals, who had a 14-0 lead after running only four plays in the first quarter. They didn’t score again until the final 35 seconds of the game, by which time Kelseyville had reeled off 42 unanswered points for a 42-14 lead.
Asked what he was thinking after Clear Lake wide receiver Austin Davis caught a pass from quarterback Alex Adams and ended up going 90 yards for a touchdown for a 14-0 Cardinals lead less than three minutes into the game, Larsen said he couldn’t repeat it for the newspaper.
Clear Lake received the opening kickoff and had a 7-0 lead one play and 18 seconds later when Adams hit Davis on a 10-yard pass and Davis lateraled the ball to a trailing teammate, Rodrigo Lupercio, who streaked down the Kelseyville sideline untouched for the touchdown, a play covering 72 yards in all.
“We’ve been working on that play (the hook and lateral) all season and we decided we were going to run it no matter where we were on the field,” Cory said.
Kelseyville picked up one first down on its initial possession but ended up punting the ball back to the Cardinals, who were pinned deep in their own territory at the 10-yard line. Adams threw two incomplete passes to bring up third down when he hit Davis in stride near midfield. Davis had one defender to beat and he did with ease, streaking into the end zone for a touchdown with 9:15 left in the first quarter.
To say the Knights were stunned and teetering at that point would be an understatement, but the panic was shortlived — as in 14 seconds long. After taking the ensuing kickoff and starting at their own 41-yard line, Kelseyville answered fire with fire, so to speak, getting a big play of its own to get right back into the game. Adrian Villalobos took a handoff from quarterback Alex Garcia, burst into the Clear Lake secondary and weaved his way into the end zone for a 59-yard touchdown.
The momentum shift caused by Villalobos’ big play had the Knights on the attack virtually the rest of the night while the Cardinals were simply trying to hold on. Kelseyville dominated time of possession the rest of the game — and by a huge margin — even if the scoreboard said otherwise in the first half.
The Knights moved the ball from their own 5 to the Clear Lake 7 early in the second quarter before coughing up a fumble that the Cardinals’ Justin Cantrell recovered.
Clear Lake gained just three yards before it had to punt the ball back to Kelseyville and the Knights took over at the Cardinals’ 35 and were in the end zone six plays later, Villalobos capping the drive with a 8-yard run. Bryan Carillo’s extra-point kick was blocked after a low snap, leaving Clear Lake up 14-13.
The Cardinals moved the ball out to near midfield late in the quarter before punting the ball back to the Knights, who had almost no time left – 57.2 seconds – and awful field position at their own 13. A prudent move may have been to just let the clock run out and go into halftime down by one point, but Larsen said that wasn’t going to happen.
“We’re not going down easy and we weren’t going to run out the clock,” Larsen said.
Garcia completed three passes totaling 40 yards to get the Knights just across midfield with 11.6 seconds remaining. And that’s when the Knights used a bit of their own razzle-dazzle, just as the Cardinals had done on their first play of the game, to keep the drive moving. Garcia handed off the ball on a reverse, but it was no running play the Knights had in mind. The reverse man pitched the ball back to Villalobos and he threw it deep down the field to wide open receiver Zack Watkins, who was taken down at the 9-yard line with 2.7 seconds remaining.
The Knights called a timeout and on the final play of the half it was Robert Chavez scoring on a 9-yard run, Chavez diving into the end zone as the horn sounded. Garcia’s pass to Watkins on the conversion gave Kelseyville a 21-14 lead as the Knights fans went nuts.
As much as Villalobos’ long touchdown run in the first quarter had shifted momentum in Kelseyville’s favor, Larsen said the Knights’ scoring drive right before halftime cemented that momentum squarely in his team’s favor, and they never relinquished it.
“We beat them at their own game on trick plays,” he said.
The second half was all about the running of the Knights and Jordi Lopez, who kept the sticks moving and the clock running as Kelseyville pounded the ball down the field with impunity. Lopez finished with 134 yards, most of that in the final two quarters, and his touchdown runs of 5 yards in the third quarter and 1 yard in the fourth quarter allowed the Knights to put the game away.
“By him establishing the dives the way he did, Jordi Lopez set up everything else for us,” Larsen said.
Sandwiched between the two Lopez scores was another big play from Villalobos, who picked off an Adams pass with 3:44 left in the third quarter and motored 47 yards for a touchdown and a 35-14 lead.
Clear Lake ended Kelseyville’s run of points on a Bobby Gonzalez 5-yard run in the closing seconds.
Cory said the Cardinals have no one but themselves to blame for letting the game get away after a promising start.
“We didn’t execute on either side of the football,” he said. “We put the ball on the ground too many times, even when we didn’t lose it.”
On the Kelseyville touchdown right before halftime that put the Knights ahead to stay, Cory said, “We didn’t get lined up on that play correctly. You can’t play like that. They’re a good football team and that’s what happens when you do.”
Kelseyville finished with 312 yards on the ground and 144 through the air. That’s compared to only 78 rushing yards for the Cardinals, and most of those came late in the fourth quarter, and 212 passing yards for Adams, who was 12-for-23. Davis caught four passes for 114 yards.
Both teams turned the ball over twice.
