The Long Beach Poly football team has its last non-league game this week at home against Mission Viejo, a team that very well might be the best in California.
And you thought that the St. Bonaventure game was hard to watch.
Coming off of a reality-check loss to St. Bonaventure two weeks ago, the Poly Jackrabbits rebounded for a close victory an the road at Narbonne. Although the offense was not as fluid as it was in the season opener against Bakersfield, there were some obvious improvements from their seven-point effort in the game two weeks ago.
That Narbonne game was one that should give fans an idea of what Poly is really like this year - they aren't the team that struggled to do much of anything against St. Bonaventure, and they certainly weren't the team that Rivals.com had as their national preseason #2. Although this year's Poly is better than last year's 6-6 team, they haven't shown the strength to be compared to the Pac-5 champion '07 or '08 teams.
But tonight's matchup with the Mission Viejo Diablos will tell a lot about what kind of heart this Jackrabbit squad has, and if they are still serious about contending for a Southern Section title.
If Poly wants to stay alive in the minds of the CIF judges who put teams through to state bowl games, they're going to have to beat Mission Viejo, and they're going to have to do it with a lot of style points. They're going to have to prove that the St. Bonaventure game was an unfortunate fluke, and that they are still a top California team.
Beating the Diablos won't be easy though. For Poly to win, their underperforming defense must first stop quarterback Alex Bridgeford, who in two games against powerhouse Loyola (Los Angeles) and Corona, has thrown for 7 TDs and no interceptions. Their offense will have to get at least the 34 points that Corona was able to get in order to counter for the offensive party Mission Viejo is capable of having.
All signs used to point to this being a good game. Now, Calpreps.com has Mission Viejo beating Poly 42-20 and the home fans are worried about suffering through another disaster. Look for Poly to have a better game than they did against St. Bonaventure, but I wouldn't expect them to win this one. That's my final prediction, no "just kiddings" or "hahas" attached. But, of course, I will be pulling for a Jackrabbit upset.
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