LANCASTER \u2014 The seniors on the Desert Christian football team got their first playoff victory on Friday night.<\/p>\n
The Knights won their first playoff game in four years with a 34-9 victory over Malibu in a CIF-Southern Section 8-man Division 2 first-round victory at Lancaster High School.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels amazing. We haven\u2019t done that,\u201d Desert Christian senior Justin Green said. \u201cIt feels great. We plan on going on this run.\u201d<\/p>\n
Desert Christian (7-3) will play at Hesperia Christian (7-3) in the quarterfinals next week. Hesperia Christian defeated ACE 26-13 in the first round on Friday.<\/p>\n
Desert Christian lost a first-round playoff game to Hesperia Christian last season, the Knights\u2019 first playoff appearance since advancing to the second round in 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was great, too, because these guys just haven\u2019t experienced it,\u201d Desert Christian coach Aaron Williams said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had tough draws in the past with playoffs. It\u2019s a real testament to our season where we can host a home game and play a good team like Malibu.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a good win. Hopefully we can carry that into next week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Desert Christian took control of the game on the first play of their second possession.<\/p>\n
Green ran for a 71-yard touchdown on the first play of the Knights\u2019 second drive to give them a 6-3 lead with 1:12 remaining in the first quarter.<\/p>\n
Green scored again on Desert Christian\u2019s third possession, this time on a 6-yard run to cap a seven-play, 58-yard drive and give the Knights a 14-3 lead with 9:47 left in the second quarter. Senior quarterback Andrew Silva ran in the two-point conversion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel great. Obviously we came out hot. We came out great,\u201d Green said. \u201cWe played a really good first half. Some mistakes to fix. We played the second half a little wobbly. We still have mistakes to fix, but we executed it almost to how we envisioned it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Malibu junior Maxson Chiate missed a 23-yard field goal with 5:39 left in the first half.<\/p>\n
The Desert Christian offense immediately capitalized on the missed field goal.<\/p>\n
Desert Christian senior Raymond Latimore scored on a 65-yard touchdown run on the first play, giving the Knights a 21-3 lead with 5:26 remaining in the first half.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels incredible,\u201d Latimore said. \u201cI can\u2019t describe it. It\u2019s incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Desert Christian senior Kenneth Castillo missed a 25-yard field goal with 2:10 remaining in the first half.<\/p>\n
Chiate made a 13-yard field goal to cap the opening drive of the game and give the Sharks a quick 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we weren\u2019t getting penalties, I felt like they were fantastic,\u201d Williams said. \u201cA lot of times, especially early on, we were shooting ourselves in the foot. The defense, we would play great for a couple of times and then we would just make a bonehead penalty, so it was a little frustrating there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Desert Christian was penalized 15 times for 140 yards in the game.<\/p>\n
The Desert Christian offense finished with 413 total yards, as the Knights rushed for 292 yards on a combined 29 carries by five players.<\/p>\n
Latimore rushed for 191 yards on 16 carries and caught a 35-yard touchdown pass from Silva with 30 seconds remaining in the third quarter to cap the scoring for the Knights, giving them a 34-3 lead.<\/p>\n
Latimore said teamwork was the key for the Knights and credited the offensive line for the Knights\u2019 offensive night.<\/p>\n
Latimore believes the Knights can carry the success into the next round.<\/p>\n
\u201cWatching film and staying disciplined in practice,\u201d Latimore said.<\/p>\n
The Desert Christian offense scored on the opening possession of the second half.<\/p>\n
Desert Christian senior Stephen Wiser caught a 25-yard touchdown pass from Green to cap a seven-play, 50-yard drive to give the Knights a 28-3 lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, I felt like the guys rallied. We did a great job of running the ball well,\u201d Williams said. \u201cWe knew that we could rely on Ray, when push comes to shove, that\u2019s the guy. But we have a lot of weapons, Stephen and Justin, so hopefully that was put on display for everybody to see that we\u2019re not a one-trick pony and our offense is really good.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think our defense made more of a statement tonight, probably more than our offense, in just allowing the three points. I was happy with the overall victory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silva completed 5-of-13 passes for 96 yards and one touchdown. Wiser caught three passes for 66 yards.<\/p>\n
Green completed 1-of-2 passes for 25 yards and rushed for 97 yards on six carries.<\/p>\n
Wiser also intercepted a pass in the fourth quarter, as did sophomore Asiyah White on a two-point conversion attempt by Malibu. Wiser also broke up a pass in the third quarter<\/p>\n
Malibu senior Tanner Kies scored on a 50-yard punt return with 9:38 remaining in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
Kies rushed for 104 yards on 20 carries.<\/p>\n
Malibu junior quarterback Sawyer Keegan completed 9-of-24 passes for 105 yards.<\/p>\n
The Sharks finished with 177 total yards in offense, just 67 yards in the second half.<\/p>\n
Desert Christian sophomore Franky Arcidiacono and junior Didiel Molina Reyes each had a sack in the second half for the Knights\u2019 defense.<\/p>\n
The two teams faced off less than a month ago, with Desert Christian winning 32-15 on Oct. 11 at home.<\/p>\n
The Knights then lost two straight league games, to Faith Baptist (62-0) and Lancaster Baptist (38-34), to end the regular season.<\/p>\n
Desert Christian finished in the three-way tie for second place in the Heritage League this season, with Lancaster Baptist and Santa Clarita Christian, all finishing with 2-2 records. Faith Baptist went undefeated at 4-0 to win the league title.<\/p>\n
Desert Christian lost a first-round playoff game last season, 80-42, to Hesperia Christian. It was the first playoff appearance for the Knights in three seasons.<\/p>\n
Desert Christian won a first-round playoff game in 2021, beating Cuyama Valley 64-28. The Knights then lost to CSDR in the second round, 84-12.<\/p>\n
The first-round playoff win in 2021 was the first playoff victory for Desert Christian in 10 years and first since the Knights switched to 8-man football.<\/p>\n
Desert Christian advanced to the CIF-Southern Section Division 13 championship game in 2011, losing to Rio Hondo Prep, 34-13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LANCASTER \u2014 The seniors on the Desert Christian football team got their first playoff victory on Friday night.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[265,647,5458,639,331,67,7,5446,636,122,63,6,84,47357,1890,47358,646,632,635,638,1287],"class_list":{"0":"post-509468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl-playoffs","8":"tag-american-football","9":"tag-american-football-competitions","10":"tag-american-football-playoffs","11":"tag-champion-seasons-in-american-football","12":"tag-college-football","13":"tag-college-football-conference-seasons","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-gridiron-football","16":"tag-gridiron-football-variants","17":"tag-national-football-league","18":"tag-ncaa-division-i-fbs-football-teams","19":"tag-nfl","20":"tag-nfl-playoffs","21":"tag-nfl-seasons","22":"tag-nfl-teams","23":"tag-nfl-teams-seasons","24":"tag-outdoor-sports","25":"tag-seasons-in-american-football","26":"tag-seasons-in-american-sport","27":"tag-team-sports","28":"tag-touchdown"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115514140552559894","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}