{"id":1044455,"date":"2026-09-05T06:54:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T06:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1044455\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T06:54:24","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T06:54:24","slug":"de-la-salle-duece-jones-drew-earn-win-over-cardinal-newman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1044455\/","title":{"rendered":"De La Salle, Duece Jones-Drew earn win over Cardinal Newman"},"content":{"rendered":"

CONCORD \u2013 A handful of big plays on offense and special teams and a particularly stout effort on defense helped the De La Salle football team open its home schedule<\/a> on a positive note.<\/p>\n

Receiver Damari Dean caught first-half touchdown passes of 79 and 24 yards, and Duece Jones-Drew<\/a> returned a punt 53 yards for another score early in the third quarter to help lead the Spartans to a 42-3 nonleague win<\/a> over Cardinal Newman-Santa Rosa at Owen Owens Field on Friday.<\/p>\n

Quarterback Jaxon Loftin threw both scoring strikes to Dean, with the 79-yard bomb coming on De La Salle\u2019s sixth offensive play from scrimmage. He also capped the scoring with a 23-yard touchdown run early in the third quarter, as the Spartans (2-0) extended their unbeaten streak against North Coast Section teams to a ridiculous 285 games<\/a> (284-0-1).<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a really tough opponent,\u201d Spartans coach Justin Alumbaugh said of Cardinal Newman, which was coming off a 23-17 overtime loss to Folsom, the state\u2019s seventh-ranked team,<\/a> per MaxPreps.com, last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, they\u2019ve got a lot of size. They\u2019re well coached. Whenever you play a really good team, and you walk away with a 42-3 win, there\u2019s far more positive than negative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alumbaugh was particularly impressed with his defense, which held the Cardinals (0-2) to two first downs and nine yards passing in the first half.<\/p>\n

The Spartans fumbled the ball deep in their own territory on their first drive, which later became a 45-yard field goal by senior Devon Taylor. But they repeatedly hurried Cardinal Newman junior quarterback L.T. Retamoza<\/a> in the first half, sacking him twice.<\/p>\n

The Spartans also forced two turnovers on downs and picked Retamoza off once in the second half.<\/p>\n

Junior running back James Curoso rushed for 138 yards last week against Folsom and was Cardinal Newman\u2019s biggest bright spot on Friday with 62 hard yards on 18 carries.<\/p>\n

De La Salle wanted to clean up some things after its 35-25 win last week over Serra, the Bay Area\u2019s third-ranked team.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe really emphasized communication, not giving up any big plays,\u201d Alumbaugh said. \u201cLast week, 75% of Serra\u2019s yards came on three plays. That\u2019s a no-no. The good news is the rest of the team, for the rest of the game, we were playing pretty dang good defense, and we knew we had it in us.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we knew we had to shore up some things, and we did. Defensive staff did a great job, and I thought our kids played really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, the Spartans have some areas they want to address in advance of next Friday\u2019s home game against St. Francis, which lost 19-17<\/a> to Del Oro-Loomis on a last-second field goal on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur offensive line was really bad tonight,\u201d Alumbaugh said of the mostly experienced group. \u201cWe didn\u2019t get anywhere near enough push up front. We were whiffing on the second-level linebackers. Disappointing. A lot of those guys are returners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lofkin completed 13 of 16 passes for 204 yards, and Jones-Drew had 10 carries for 75 yards. Jamal Johnson-Lucas and Judah Pape also had touchdown runs in the Spartans\u2019 win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CONCORD \u2013 A handful of big plays on offense and special teams and a particularly stout effort on…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1044456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[15173,1582,276,99768,49397,15174,195009,15175,18131,3102,1362,2961,1370,224,5337,1585,120893,295273,15185,62],"class_list":["post-1044455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bay-area","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-central-contra-costa","tag-concord","tag-contra-costa-county","tag-de-la-salle","tag-east-bay","tag-high-school-football","tag-high-school-sports","tag-inside-sports","tag-la","tag-latest-headlines","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-north-bay","tag-santa-rosa","tag-social-alert","tag-sonoma-county","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117217123825369570","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1044455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1044456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1044455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1044455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1044455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}