It took a bend-but-don’t-break defensive effort for Dorsey High School to survive its first-round contest of the City Section Division I football playoffs and earn a second shot at Crenshaw.
The Dons had 13 tackles for loss, forced two turnovers and limited a normally high-powered attack of Roosevelt to 3.7 yards per carry and 272 yards of total offense in winning 22-7 Friday at Jackie Robinson Stadium.
By winning, Dorsey (7-4) earned a rematch with Crenshaw in the quarterfinals next week. No. 2 seeded Crenshaw routed the Dons, 41-0 a few weeks ago in Coliseum League and opened the playoffs by crushing Jefferson, 83-0.
“Defense won the game for us,” Dons coach Paul Knox said of the playoff opener.
It was a good thing that side of the ball did show up because the offense didn’t really move the ball with much consistency.
They took advantage of their speed to break two long plays — a 61-yard scoring pass from Noah Whitney and a 42-yarder from Whitney to Jermale Jefferson — in the first half.
That would be the extent of the Dons’ scoring until Whitney (7-for-14 for 155 yards) connected on his third TD pass of the night, a 26-yarder to Lawson with 2:58 left. A failed onsides kick by Roosevelt put them in position for that score.
Robert Jones added 97 yards on 22 carries for Dorsey, which continually shot itself in the foot with penalties (13 for 85 yards).
“We had too many false starts and holdings,” Knox said. “We’d get a good play, then get a holding. We’ve got to go back and work on this. We have to be better against Crenshaw.
“If we eliminate all these mistakes, I’m confident we can beat them.”
Leading Dorsey’s defensive effort were linebackers Daquan Baker, Erin Washngton, Aubrey Lovo and Clinton Hewitt and down linemen Henry Wilks and Kamran Ellis.
Baker was in the Rough Rider backfield all day and ended the game with an interception at the 15 to kill a scoring threat.
For Roosevelt (8-3) it was a game of missed opportunities.
On five different occasions, the Rough Riders reached the Dorsey 21 or closer, only to come away empty.
In the first quarter, Julio Gallegos returned a punt 23 yards to the Don nine-yard line. That ended with a mishandled snap, ruining a makeable field goal attempt.
In the second period, a 32-yard pass from David Arriaga to his brother, Daniel, put the ball at the 13. But three five-yard penalties set them back and the drive stalled.
They got to the 13 in the third period, and again got nothing out of it and in the fourth got to the five before being stopped on downs.
The Riders finally broke through when Arriaga (13-for-30 for 154 yards) connected with Desiderio Ramirez on a 15-yard pass with 5:02 to play.
That cut the Dorsey lead to 14-7, but the ensuing onsides kick didn’t travel to required 10 yards, giving the Dons a short field they soon converted into their third score.
“We just couldn’t finish drives,” Roosevelt coach Javier Cid said. “That’s something we started doing too much of. But you have to give Dorsey credit on defense. They mixed it up a lot and showed some things we hadn’t seen, like a 3-3 stack and played man on us.”
Cid was pleased with his team’s defensive effort.
“That was outstanding for us,” he said. “They had the two big plays in the first half for scores, but other than that we did a pretty good job.”
