ILH Football
No. 3 Saint Louis tops No. 7 Kamehameha, 21-7


  



Fri, Oct 7, 2016 @ Aloha Stadium [ 7:45 pm ]


Final 1 2 3 4 T
Saint Louis (10-1-0) 14 0 0 721
Kamehameha (3-6-0) 0 7 0 07
Boogie Yam 169 yd 1 TD
Tua Tagovailoa 138 yd 2 TD
Tua Tagovailoa 99 yd 1 TD
Leelan Oasay 67 yd 1 TD

HALAWA — Saint Louis got back in the win column Friday night.

Tua Tagovailoa passed for 138 yards and factored into all three Saint Louis scores in a 21-7 win over Kamehameha in front of a crowd of about 3,000 fans at Hawaiian Tel FCU Field at Aloha Stadium.

The Crusaders bounced back from a 33-20 loss to Punahou eight days prior to improve to 6-1 overall, while the Warriors dropped to 3-5.

Saint Louis, the No. 3 team in the ScoringLive/Hawaiian Electric Division I Power Rankings, completed the ILH double round-robin first round with a 5-1 record, which matches second-ranked Punahou for the top mark.

The Crusaders will be the top seed in the ILH second round by virtue of a card draw that was conducted late Friday and take on fourth-seeded Iolani in a 5 p.m. game next Friday at Aloha Stadium. Seventh-ranked Kamehameha which has lost three of its last four, will be the third seed and face second-seeded Punahou in the late game.

Saint Louis never trailed in the game, but was less than stellar. It finished with a modest 367 yards of total offense, well below its season average of 442 yards entering the weekend.

"It's still a good win. It wasn't our best, but it's something we can learn from," Tagovailoa said. "From the Punahou game to today, I feel this is one of the challenging parts, where we start off fast, but we don't finish too strong, so this is just something we've got to work on in practice."

Tagovailoa scrambled for the game's first score. He eluded the Kamehameha pass rush by stepping up in the pocket behind taking off. Tagovailoa started out up the middle before finding some running room to his left and crossing the plane of the end zone on the 9-yard run with 5:22 left in the opening quarter.

The touchdown was set-up by Kai Kaneshiro's interception off Kamehameha quarterback Boogie Yam.

The Crusaders operated their no-huddle offense at a blistering speed early, which paid off in the form of Tagovailoa's 32-yard pitch-and-catch to Leelan Oasay, who split a pair of defenders are making the grab on the scoring play. Jacob Tobias tacked on the PAT to make it a 14-0 lead late in the first quarter.

"The game plan was kind of to get everything going quick," Tagovailoa said. "We knew they liked to bring the house. We knew they like to blitz, they do a lot of stunts, and we tried to do our best to get things quick and get things going right away."

Kamehameha pulled within 14-7 after Trever Kahunahana 8-yard touchdown pass from Yam late in the second quarter.

The Warriors benefitted from a 44-yard Yam-to-Jaykob Cabunoc completion to move the chains on 3rd-and-12, as well as an encroachment penalty against Saint Louis on 4th-and-3 one play prior to the score.

The Crusaders took a 14-7 lead into halftime. The score held until the 9:50 mark in the fourth quarter when Tagovailoa hit Chandler Washington-Villanueva on a post pattern for a 12-yard TD pass on 3rd-and-goal.

Tagovailoa completed 10 of 18 pass attempts and was intercepted once. He rushed for a game-high 99 games on 13 carries.

Yam finished with 169 yards on 17-of-30 passing and completed passes to 10 different receivers.

Isaiah Tufaga had a late interception and Kahai Auld registered a sack for the Crusaders' defense, which limited the Warriors to 6 of 16 on third-down conversions.

Kamehameha first-year coach Abu Maafala is hopeful his team can build some momentum off the loss going into the second round.

"Regardless of the scoreboard, we had to set ourselves up for the tournament," Maafala said. "We executed better tonight. We had some good things here and there, we left about 17 points off the board, but that's the best four quarters that we've put together all year."

The seventh-ranked Warriors have lost three of their last four games and will be the third seed in the ILH tournament. They will face second-seeded Punahou in the late game Friday at Aloha Stadium.

Saint Louis coach Cal Lee was not on the sidelines for Friday's game. He is recuperating from a recent hospitalization, a school official said.



Reach Kalani Takase at [email protected].




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