INLAND FIELDHOUSE

I covered the San Jacinto-Riverside Notre Dame varsity football game for the Riverside Press-Enterprise on Friday, Oct. 2, 2009 and came away thinking about how just one or two players can make a huge difference in a game played by teams comprised of 40 or 50 athletes.

San Jacinto (4-0 overall, 1-0 Mountain Pass League), for example, has senior quarterback Nigel Barksdale (5-10, 160) and sophomore running back Emmanuel Hutchinson (5-7, 170). These two were unlike any other players on the football field on Friday night. When the ran, they ran past defenders. When they moved, defenders missed. The pair had a hand in each of the Tigers four touchdowns, even connecting on a final, 71-yard score in the fourth quarter.

You can watch a video of the game here.

At his best, Barksdale is an instinctive runner who has a knack for dodging tacklers. His arm and decision-making looked suspect, though he did make several nice throws, including a 36-yard TD pass to senior WR Dorcel Hogan (6-2, 185) on a deep slant out. He seemed to favor taking off with the ball rather than showing patience and making a throw.

Hutchinson will be an all-county back if he keeps up his performance from this game. Dynamic and elusive, Hutchinson averaged 5.7 yards per carry, 22.3 yards per kick return and 12.7 yards per punt return. He’s a weapon any team would be happy to have.

Notre Dame (2-2, 0-1) doesn’t have anyone with the big-play capabilities of those two. They tried to pound the run with senior RB Will Smith (6-3, 208) and had some success doing so but Smith seemed to hurt himself about mid-way through the game (again). Two weeks ago against Aquinas it was his ankle. I’m left to speculate as to what it can be this time, though I did see him limping in post-game.

Senior QB Chris Lopez (6-0, 180) was solid until the Titans were down by three touchdowns. He was forced to throw deep after San Jacinto’s Hamilton scored on a 39-yard run to make it 24.7 in the third quarter, and throwing deep isn’t something Lopez, or Notre Dame, is particularly good at doing. Lopez, adept at short passes, often racks up consecutive completions to the tune of five or six at a time. That didn’t happen against San Jacinto, who instead forced five or six incompletions at a time as Lopez tried to reach medium and long-range receivers.