Sports Keyshawn Johnson sat down with St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy head football coach Devah Thomas, who led his team to its first CIF-Southern Section championship title after an 0-8 initiating to the season and a 1-9 final file.
How did St. Pius — a dinky, co-ed personal Catholic high faculty hailing from south Los Angeles with roughly 520 college students — raise out this form of feat?
First of all, its energy of schedule used to be right ample to design an at-graceful berth into the postseason, per Sports activities Illustrated.
“Folk factual can no longer imagine it,” Thomas talked about on doubtlessly the most modern version of “All Details No Brakes.” “I develop no longer catch the foundations, I factual apply them,” Thomas added of Calpreps, the computer draw at chance of design the playoff divisions.
“I figured if we obtained one or two (games) that we can catch in due to our energy of schedule used to be one amongst the high in California,” Thomas talked about. “Every team that we conducted (within the customary season) made the playoffs besides for one out of 9 groups — all within the next division than us besides for one team. … [There are] groups that went 7-3 that did no longer catch the playoffs. I mean, they conducted the Puny Sisters of the Miserable, and so it caught as a lot as them.
“They need aggressive equity. …. The CIF is running with it … [and] we match the factors.”
Aggressive equity is a newer playoff draw that places groups in their appropriate division to catch for aggressive games. If there are soundless spots available during the 16-team self-discipline, at-graceful groups are placed so as of their Calpreps rankings from very most practical to lowest. St. Pius’ Calpreps ranking is 96. Its energy of schedule ranking is 17.2, which is better than all of its playoff opponents besides Cypress (18.1), which St. Pius beat within the major round, 21-14.
St. Pius defeated Serrano within the CIF-SS Division 8 final on Friday night time, 38-19. Junior quarterback Jassi Williams threw 25 passes to 6 various receivers for 444 yards and scored a combined 5 touchdowns (four passing, one speeding).
Thomas went on to share why he felt St. Pius would lunge on a trail if it got into the playoffs. “You factual seen the grit, the grind of these adolescents,” he talked about. “They never gave up. They came each Monday after a loss and were soundless motivated.”
The Warriors’ football team includes factual 30 total gamers, with factual two seniors on the total team.
Next up is the reveal regional sport on Saturday night time. St. Pius will host San Diego-basically basically based mostly St. Augustine, which went 0-10 in its customary season, within the Division 4-A matchup.
St. Pius previously reached and misplaced the Division 14 final in 2019 and Division 7 final in 2021, which used to be Thomas’ first season. Thomas has obtained playoff games in each season since then.
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