In a driving rain, there was no simple way to stop the Garfield rushing attack on Friday night at Southwest College.<\/p>\n
Even without their star tailback, the Bulldogs scored six touchdowns \u2014 all on the ground \u2014 to defeat host Palisades 42-21 in a City Section Open Division quarterfinal playoff game.<\/p>\n
Zastice Jauregui scored five times for the fifth-seeded Bulldogs (9-2), who earned a shot at No. 1-seeded Carson in the semifinals next week.<\/p>\n
\u201cCarson took us out last year so we\u2019ll be trying to get payback,\u201d Jauregui said.<\/p>\n
Replacing Ceasar Reyes, who injured his knee early in the East L.A. Classic against Roosevelt and did not play in Garfield\u2019s regular-season finale against Eagle Rock, Jauregui is filling his shoes just fine.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s out for the year and we miss him but he just had surgery yesterday,\u201d Jauregui said of Reyes. \u201cWe can run the ball against anyone \u2026 we have the best O-line in the City.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Garfield\u2019s Christian Gomez tackles Palisades\u2019 Malachi Rossat the five-yard line during a City Section Open Division quarterfinal playoff game Friday night.<\/p>\n
(Steve Galluzzo \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
Garfield received the second-half kickoff and on its first play, Jauregui raced 65 yards for a touchdown. Javier Vargas snuck into the end zone for the two-point conversion to make it 23-6. Jauregui capped the Bulldogs\u2019 next drive with a 77-yard touchdown run on the same play \u2014 a direct snap to the running back.<\/p>\n
Demare Dezeurn returned the ensuing kickoff 75 yards for a touchdown and quarterback Jack Thomas added the two-point run to pull the fourth-seeded Dolphins back to within 15 points.<\/p>\n
Vargas burst through a hole on the second play of the Bulldogs\u2019 next drive for an 81-yard gain, slipping to the slick turf just before the goal line. No matter, he pounded over left tackle on the next snap to make it 35-14 midway through the third quarter.<\/p>\n
Garfield stopped Palisades on fourth down four times \u2014 the last completing a goal-line stand early in the fourth quarter after the Dolphins (10-1) had a first-and-goal at the two-yard line.<\/p>\n
Dezeurn got the Western League winners on the scoreboard with 18 seconds left in the first half when a pass was tipped by two defenders and the junior transfer from Bishop Alemany grabbed the ball at the five-yard line and tiptoed into the end zone. He scored the Dolphins\u2019 last touchdown on a 77-yard interception return with just over three minutes left in the game.<\/p>\n
The Eastern League champions applied the finishing touch on Jauregui\u2019s 12-yard run with 2:03 left.<\/p>\n
Thomas entered the contest having completed 176 of 283 passes for 3,147 yards, 42 touchdowns and only three interceptions. He was the Division I Offensive Most Valuable Player last fall while throwing for 46 touchdowns and leading the Dolphins to the Division I championship game.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was talk that they were going to put 40 points on us,\u201d Jauregui said. \u201cThey were undefeated, but we knew we could win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palisades and Garfield had last met in the playoffs in 2013 when the Bulldogs won 27-20 in the first round in Division I, which was then the top division.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a driving rain, there was no simple way to stop the Garfield rushing attack on Friday night…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":380547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,182393,182395,163457,2961,224,5337,17466,182391,5950,21477,3007,6620,182394,9176,182396,182392,168970,1628],"class_list":{"0":"post-380546","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-city-section-girl","11":"tag-gondoliers","12":"tag-kill","13":"tag-la","14":"tag-los-angeles","15":"tag-losangeles","16":"tag-palisades","17":"tag-samantha-lortie","18":"tag-season","19":"tag-set","20":"tag-team","21":"tag-time","22":"tag-tulah-block","23":"tag-venice","24":"tag-volleyball-court","25":"tag-volleyball-title","26":"tag-west-valley-league","27":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115553356132212319","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380546","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=380546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}