‘How ’bout them Colts, baby?’ James Logan shakes off loss, seizes WACC Foothill division lead with rout of O’Dowd

UNION CITY — There wasn’t much James Logan coach Immanuel Pride needed to say after his team resurrected its West Alameda County Conference Foothill Division title hopes and put itself in pole position for the league crown with a 17-0 rout of Bishop O’Dowd. 

But there was one thing the first-year coach needed to get off his chest. 

“How ‘bout them Colts, baby?” Logan’s first-year head man exclaimed. “That’s how we do it. The going got tough, and the tough got going.”

James Logan (6-3, 4-1) was coming off a disappointing loss last week to San Leandro, and their hopes of a league championship were hanging by a thread.  

But the Colts turned the page and dictated terms Thursday night to league leader O’Dowd (5-4, 4-1), sustaining long drives with a workmanlike rushing attack. It didn’t pay many dividends on the scoreboard initially, though a late 38-yard field goal by Giovani Gonzalez gave Logan a 3-0 halftime lead.

“Points are points,” Pride said. “And so the fact that we were able to put some points on the board and go into the locker room with a little bit of momentum, couldn’t ask for a better outcome going into the half.”

In the third quarter, Logan seized control of the contest when Jeramiyah Cotton snagged an interception at O’Dowd’s 35-yard-line and ran it back untouched into the end zone, giving the Colts a double-digit edge and momentum that would sustain their gallop for the remainder of the game. 

“I trusted all my teammates to get us into the right position so I could get into my position and make the play that I needed to make,” Cotton said. “That’s all that matters.”

Cotton still had one game-changing play left in the tank. After Teddy Gaoteote intercepted an O’Dowd pass at the goal line, the Colts mounted a long drive from their 9-yard line all the way to O’Dowd’s 15.  

Six consecutive runs by Angelos Gonzalez Teran set Logan up, then Kamari Robinson found Cotton for a completion in the corner of the end zone, putting the Colts up three scores and snuffing out any comeback hopes for the Dragons.

“We didn’t play our best today,” O’Dowd coach Hardy Nickerson said of his team, which threw three interceptions. “Bottom line. Especially in the last four or five games, we had not turned the ball over. This was just one of those performances that was totally out of character for us.”

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