3A high school football semifinal: Bulldogs defense stalled Juan Diego, kept game close

SALT LAKE CITY — A little bit of magic seemed to be with Judge Memorial in the final minutes against two-time defending 3A champion Juan Diego.

The Bulldogs mounted their first scoring drive late in the fourth quarter to force overtime and kept their first possession of overtime alive with a double-pitch from James Delacenserie to Christian Weidle and from Weidle to Daniel Shiramizu to set up a 25-yard field goal attempt by Pat Gibbs.

Unfortunately for Judge, that luck ran dry too soon. Jeff Ika blocked Gibbs' field goal and the Soaring Eagles came through with a game-winning 10-yard pass from Brock Garn to Eric Heinz to clinch a 13-7 3A semifinal victory on Friday night at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

For Bulldogs' coach James Cordova, the late-game heroics were a case of doing too little, too late.

"We didn't do enough during the game to give ourselves an opportunity to win," Cordova said. "We really struggled offensively the entire game. We made some major mistakes. You can't do that against a good football team, and they're a hell of a football team."

Judge managed just 206 yards of total offense — 86 yards came through the air — with 59 of those coming on the Bulldogs' lone scoring drive. They converted only 1-of-10 third downs.

Defensive play was a different story entirely. The Bulldogs kept Juan Diego from running away with the game simply because they stopped the Soaring Eagles from running, period.

Juan Diego managed just 167 yards on 52 carries. Gaining only 3.2 yards per attempt forced the Soaring Eagles to go to the air at different times in an effort to move the chains.

"They defended us really well, no doubt," Soaring Eagle coach John Colosimo said. "It was a great defensive effort by them. Good game plan. They just took away everything we like to do."

Judge also excelled at making big stops to halt potential scoring drives.

The Bulldogs blocked a 32-yard field goal attempt by Skyler Doran to prevent Juan Diego from taking a 10-point halftime lead. Then, in the third quarter, the Soaring Eagle reached the Judge 1-yard line, only to see the drive end when Shiramizu picked off a pass by Garn at the 2.

Colosimo said Judge did a good job of exposing shortcomings in Juan Diego's offense, and he felt displeased with his team's inability to finish drives.