By Ron Vrooman
\n(Alhambra) – Quarterback Noah Rodriguez completed 13 of 28 passes for 226 yards and five touchdowns to lead Alhambra to a 49-21 first-round playoff victory over the visiting Diamond Bar Brahmas on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Three of Rodriguez’s TD passes went to wide receiver Vito Russell, who caught four throws for a total of 41 yards, and slot man Kody Chuang made four catches for 101 yards and a score.<\/p>\n
The undefeated Moors, who improved their record to 11-0, will go on the road for a quarterfinal game against 9-2 Calvary Chapel of Santa Ana this coming Friday night. The site of the game hasn’t yet been determined.<\/p>\n
The Moors’ win over the Brahmas wasn’t as easy as the final score might suggest. Alhambra fell behind, 14-0, in the first quarter when a turnover on downs and a fumble led to two touchdown passes by Diamond Bar quarterback Dylan Karanickolas.<\/p>\n
Then, after the Moors scored four touchdowns in the second quarter to take a 27-14 lead, Karanickolas fired a 52-yard TD pass to Liam McCabe to narrow the gap to 27-21 going into halftime.<\/p>\n
Alhambra quickly regained the momentum when John Ortega caught the Brahmas’ short second-half kickoff on the fly and raced 58 yards down the sideline for a touchdown. Russell then ran for a two-point conversion to make the score 35-21 with 11:50 left in the third quarter. <\/p>\n
Just over a minute later, the Moors increased their lead to 42-21 on an 11-yard scoring pass from Rodriguez to Chuang. That touchdown came two plays after free safety Tyler Gonzalez intercepted a Karanickolas pass to give Alhambra the ball at the Diamond Bar 16-yard line.<\/p>\n
The Moors scored their final points on the first play of the fourth quarter, when Rodriguez hit wide receiver Vidhan Gurung with a nine-yard TD pass.<\/p>\n
Alhambra’s defense managed to withstand the Brahmas’ passing onslaught, coming up with three interceptions and holding Diamond Bar to a net of six yards on the ground. Karanickolas, a senior, completed 35 of 56 passes for 339 yards and all three of the Brahmas’ touchdowns. <\/p>\n
Diamond Bar finished its season with a record of 5-6. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Ron Vrooman (Alhambra) – Quarterback Noah Rodriguez completed 13 of 28 passes for 226 yards and five touchdowns to lead Alhambra to a 49-21 first-round playoff victory over the visiting Diamond Bar Brahmas on Friday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12816,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hsfootball","category-high-school-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68386,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68385\/revisions\/68386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}