CARLSBAD \u2013 An unrelenting Mission Hills High School defense had four interceptions and five sacks Friday night.<\/p>\n
The result was a 14-0 road shutout over La Costa Canyon in the Avocado West opener for both teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was all preparation,\u201d said Mission Hills defensive back Kai Taitano. \u201cWe had an extra week to prepare. We were focused.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe interceptions were all a result of paying attention in practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a good secondary, and a good pass rush helps.\u201d<\/p>\n
La Costa Canyon (3-3), ranked No. 5 in San Diego County, was without injured sophomore quarterback Luke Labrum.<\/p>\n
So senior Jackson Miller, who had been successfully rotating with Labrum all season, played the entire game.Miller, who had completed\u00a027 of 37 passes coming into the game, was 9 of 26 for 55 yards.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t help him one bit,\u201d said LCC coach Seam Sovacool. \u201cWe dropped four passes in the first half and could have been ahead 14-0.\u201dBut we weren\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first half was scoreless until the final seconds when Jordan Herrera of Mission Hills intercepted a pass and returned 50 yards to the La Costa Canyon 12 with LCC\u2019s Blake Larson saving a touchdown, tackling Herrera.<\/p>\n
Ex Taele carried to the 1 on the first play. And after a loss of one, Taele took a direct snap and scored from the 2.<\/p>\n
Both teams had chances to score in the first 24 minutes, but Mission Hills missed a 39-yard field goal and LCC failed to cash in on a fake punt pass that put the ball at the Mission Hills 31.<\/p>\n
But a 15-yard unsportsmanlike penalty pushed the ball back to the 46. And LCC ended up punting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a killer,\u201d Sovacoll said.<\/p>\n
Mission Hills (5-1), ranked No. 3 in San Diego, made it 14-0 midway through the second half.<\/p>\n
The Grizzlies cashed in a Taitano interception, which he returned 49 yards to the LCC 12.<\/p>\n
It took four plays, but Mission Hills finally scored on a 6-yard pass from Furian Inferrera to Ty Reel.<\/p>\n
Jordan Gerrera, Xavier St. John and Aiden Del Gatto had the other Mission Hills interceptions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a lot of respect for LCC,\u201d said Mission Hills coach Thomas Altieri. \u201cSean Sovacoll is a great coach. His guys gave us everything we could handle. Fought us to the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neither team had eye-popping stats with Mission Hills rushing 23 times for 81 yards and Taele\u2019s TD.<\/p>\n
Inferrera completed 11 of 19 passes for 104 yards and a TD.<\/p>\n
LCC rushed 32 times for 166 yards with Nate Taylor carrying 10 times for 98 yards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CARLSBAD \u2013 An unrelenting Mission Hills High School defense had four interceptions and five sacks Friday night. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[2044,181,74,76,75,127],"class_list":["post-483719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-high-school-sports","tag-latest-headlines","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}