OCC offense fails to get it in gear

SANTA ANA — Creative football minds have given us the wishbone, the spread, the veer, the West Coast offense and the run and shoot.

After Saturday’s 21-17 Mission Conference inter-division loss to Santa Ana Saturday at the Santa Ana Bowl, Orange Coast College Coach Mike Taylor reluctantly added another descriptive phrase to the lexicon.

The sit and sputter.

“We just aren’t consistent on offense,” said Taylor, whose team scored on just three of 15 possessions, just one of eight in the second half, to nullify its best defensive half of the season after the Dons (1-3) took a 21-10 halftime lead.

“We’d get a drive, with [Kevin] Ah-Hi and [Andrew] Banks running the ball well to help us score a touchdown,” Taylor said. “Then, the next couple of times, we’d stick it in neutral and sit and sputter.”

While the Pirates’ offense was sputtering, the visitors’ defense was putting some serious elbow grease into its work after intermission.

Until Santa Ana tailback Bryson Kelly broke off a 23-yard run to the OCC eight-yard line on the first play after an interception with 4:17 left in the game, the Dons had not earned a first down since halftime. Outside of that single defensive lapse — the only time the Dons moved the chains after capping their scoring with 1:00 left in the second quarter — Santa Ana’s other 27 plays in the final two periods netted just 16 yards.

The OCC defense, led by Nebraska-bound sophomore outside linebacker Shaun Mohler, who amassed a game-high 13 tackles, rose up and held after Kelly’s run created first-and-goal. A horde of tacklers clogged the middle on fourth down from the two, as Kelly thudded into the pile and was ruled down inside the one-foot line to give OCC possession with 2:16 remaining.

The Pirates (2-2), however, produced only three yards on its next four plays, giving the ball over to the Dons, who took a knee three straight snaps to run out the clock and snap their five-game losing streak, dating back to last season.

The Santa Ana defense, which opened the scoring when Al Vargas scooped up an Ah-Hi fumble and returned it 29 yards for a touchdown late in the first quarter, surely deserved some credit of its own.

Santa Ana sophomore David Allen picked off passes from OCC starting quarterback Sean Hakes, as well as backup Taylor Hughes to thwart two Pirates’ possessions.

Six Orange Coast plays resulted in negative yardage and 13 more gained no more than two yards.

OCC, which entered the game ranked No. 11 in the 12-team Mission Conference in total offense and last in passing offense with just more than 119 yards per game, managed just 106 yards through the air.

Hakes, a freshman transfer from Akron, completed five of eight passes for 69 yards, including a smooth 32-yard delivery to Cameron Hall on the play before Ah-Hi’s aforementioned fumble.

But Hakes was lifted midway through the third quarter, for Hughes, a freshman out of Corona del Mar High, who finished four of 12 for 26 yards.

On his first possession, however, Hughes guided the Pirates to an eight-play, 58-yard touchdown drive capped when Banks completed an 11-yard halfback pass to Wes Taylor in the end zone to pull OCC within 21-17 with 2:59 left in the third period.

But there was little else to cheer for, offensively, for OCC, which gave away valuable field position early in the fourth quarter when punter David Harrington was ruled to have touched his knee to the turf while fielding a low snap at the Pirates’ 45-yard line.

“We were thinking about maybe running a fake,” Taylor said of the ill-fated punt on fourth-and-four from the Santa Ana 43. “But I didn’t want to give up field position if the fake didn’t work.”

Banks’ four-yard touchdown run capped a four-play, 70-yard drive that gave OCC a 10-7 lead with 6:09 left in the first half.

But Santa Ana answered with a four-play, 74-yard scoring march and, after a subsequent OCC punt, went 49 yards on five plays on its next possession, to up the lead to 11.

The OCC defense, for which outside ’baker Mike Marowitz and free safety Shad Baichtal contributed seven tackles apiece and middle linebacker Matt Harris added six, allowed little else.

“We made a couple of adjustments at half,” Taylor said. “I don’t think they got so much as a first down in the second half [actually one]. I was proud of the way the defense played in the second half. We just need to find a way to score more points.”

BARRY FAULKNER may be reached at (714) 966-4615 or at [email protected].