A serious momentum shift in the offense as the starting quarterback Jake Basmajian returned to play gained Pierce College football team their first win of the season.
Avoiding the letdown of another loss Pierce Brahmas scored four touchdowns throughout the game for a winning score of 28-20 against the Glendale College Vaqueros.
Any chance that Pierce had to run the ball successfully, they took advantage of it.
Running back Gregory Wanamaker contributed immensely scoring two of the winning touchdowns, he averages 51 yards per game and a total of 215 yards so far this season.
Offensive line did a great job protecting Basmajian allowing him to complete more passes this game than before.
“Jake did a great job. He is a natural leader and coming back into the game helped the offense immensely with his leadership skills and the ability to throw the ball,” said assistant head coach Jason Sabolic.
His ability to see outside of the pocket from inside gained him access all game creating successful plays for the running backs and receiver.
“It definitely feels good to get back on the field tonight with the team. I can’t explain how great it feels to finally get this w. It wasn’t pretty and we made it a little harder than it should have been, we could have scored on a couple more opportunities but the most important part is that we got a w. Hopefully we can get a couple more and ride this to the championship,” said starting quarterback Jake Basmajian.
After Glendale Vaqueros’ quarterback Darren Orsbern was sacked, tight end Anthony Carter came in as his replacement.
“I think that Pierce played very well, they were very opportunistic. However I think when you can only play with 10 players because you are missing a quarterback it is very limiting,” said Glendale head coach John Rome.
Linebacker Marcus Jenkins gained two fumble recoveries, one that gained an 8-yard pass and run touchdown for Pierce’s Wanamaker.
The Brahmas did a great job completing passes and finding room to gain yards, however they had a couple of setbacks with personal fouls as well as other penalties, one of these which cost them a touchdown.
Brahmas suffered through 13 penalties totaling in a loss of 120 yards throughout the game.
“We made a lot of mistakes. We ran the ball well and we had a solid defense all game long. We put a win together finally however we got a lot of things to fix we still made a lot of mistakes, we got room to grow and we’re going to get better next week,” said Sabolic.
Simply put, it is not how many great plays are made, but how few bad plays are avoided. Players should not turn the ball over, and must complete tackles and eliminate these small mistakes if they are going to win.
Finally playing as a football team and executing plays gained them their 1st win and will be one of the key points to winning their next conference game at Santa Barbara on October 15th at 7 p.m.