DANVILLE – At halftime of Friday night’s game against host San Ramon Valley, Clayton Valley Charter’s offense was as balanced as you can get: 156 yards rushing and 156 yards passing.
Meanwhile, the Ugly Eagles’ defense limited the Wolves to 115 total yards in the first half as Clayton Valley took a 21-point lead. It eventually won 42-28, holding San Ramon Valley to its fewest point total of the season in a battle between two teams in the Top 15 of the Bay Area News Group rankings.
“We played a little more cover-2 than we normally do to take away the short stuff, and then we played a three-high safety, which we haven’t done a lot of this year … The d-line did a good job, too,” said Clayton Valley defensive coordinator John Canesa, who gave kudos to San Ramon Valley star quarterback Luke Baker. “You can’t stop him. What we wanted to do was just try and minimize the yards after the catch. He’s going to get his completions, he’s that good. And he ran very well tonight.”
Baker completed 21 of 35 pass attempts for 232 yards, two touchdowns and one interception. He also rushed for a team-high 57 yards and a touchdown. Last week in a 45-42 loss to McClymonds, Baker passed for 513 yards and five touchdowns.
Clayton Valley, ranked No. 15 by the Bay Area News Group, won its third game in a row to improve to 4-3 overall and 2-0 in the East Bay Athletic League Mountain Division. San Ramon Valley, ranked No. 6, fell to 5-2, 0-1.
Offensively, Clayton Valley’s Micah Avery rushed for a game-high 126 yards and touchdowns of 32, 2 and 7 yards. Teammate Nicholas Khashabi added 70 yards and a touchdown on the ground. Ugly Eagles quarterback Christian Aguilar completed 18 of 22 pass attempts for 271 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions.
“I wanted to be a little balanced just because I know they practice against such a good quarterback,” said Clayton Valley coach Tim Murphy. “We could tell at the beginning our line was controlling the tempo of the d-line.”
Clayton Valley scored touchdowns on its first two possessions to take a 14-0 first-quarter lead. First, Aguilar found a wide-open Hank Phifer for a 54-yard touchdown pass. After an interception by the Ugly Eagles’ Charles Cox III, Clayton Valley drove 65 yards to score on an impressive 32-yard run by Avery.
San Ramon Valley quickly halved that lead after an eight-yard touchdown pass from Baker to Marco Jones. But the Ugly Eagles put together an 80-yard touchdown drive in the second quarter, capped by a five-yard run by Khashabi. On CVC’s next possession, a 45-yard pass from Aguilar to Emilio Strange set up a 2-yard touchdown run by Avery, as the Ugly Eagles took a 28-7 lead into halftime.
The only scoring in the third quarter was a 16-yard touchdown pass from Baker to Caleb Padrid as Clayton Valley’s lead was again halved. But the Ugly Eagles scored the eventual winning points two plays into the second quarter on a 7-yard run by Avery.
San Ramon Valley reached the end zone unconventionally for its next touchdown. Padrid took a pass from Baker and ran 19 yards to the CVC 7, where the ball was knocked out of Padrid’s grasp by CVC’s Jake Dern. The ball bounced into the end zone, where Zack Dodson recovered it for an SRV touchdown with 8 minutes, 44 seconds left in the game.
But Clayton Valley Charter marched down the field to score on its next possession on a 13-yard pass from Aguilar to Daven Amos. San Ramon Valley then put together an 80-yard drive that culminated with a 1-yard touchdown run by Baker with 12.2 seconds remaining.
“They’re big and physical, and they covered well in the secondary,” San Ramon Valley coach Aaron Becker said about Clayton Valley. “They were covering us up and down the field and making us dink and dunk, and then they got after the quarterback and we had to hold the ball.”
Clayton Valley’s Emilio Strange caught a team-high six passes for 92 yards. San Ramon Valley’s receivers were led by Padrid, who had six receptions for 66 yards.
