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Tigers earn West Yosemite League title and Milk Can for second year in a row
The Tigers, thanks to their league championship and 8-2 overall mark, will have a bye on Nov. 13 having earned the Division II second seed behind Ridgeview, but will face old foe El Diamante in round 2 of the playoffs on Nov. 20 at 7 p.m. in Tiger Stadium. The Tigers beat the Miners 35-0 when they met two weeks ago. Assuming Lemoore gets past El Diamante, the Tigers will play either Sanger or Garces Memorial, again in Lemoore. Sanger was ranked No. 3 in Division II.
The Tigers (8-2, 6-0) were already a lock for the Division II playoffs considering they went 6-0 in the WYL in more than convincing fashion, all their league games subject to the infamous “Mercy Rule” calling for a running clock in the final quarter assuming the game is out of reach.
Despite losing in close contests earlier in the year to top-ranked Buchanan and Clovis, the Tigers have literally been on a roll. They also beat Sanger in the pre-season, a team currently ahead of them in local polls. Was this dominance, which included the Tigers outscoring their WYL opponents 258-26, expected after last year’s perfect regular season.
“We knew we had a good team,” said a very happy coach Shannon Pulliam following Friday’s thrashing of Hanford. “We knew we had a bunch of guys and a bunch of veterans coming back. To say that we were going to have a running clock in all six of our games (WYL) in the fourth quarter, I don’t know if I’d have said that, but we knew we were going to be pretty special and the thing about it is that we get to carry on and do it some more.”
The Tigers will definitely be seeded high in Division II, probably behind top-ranked Ridgeview. The playoff pairings were expected to be announced Saturday afternoon by the CIF Central Section.
Lemoore, as it entered the season finale Friday night was a fine-tuned machine, performing nearly flawlessly on offense and defense, from the running heroics of Trey Perryman and his counterpart Allen Perryman to the pass-catching antics of receiver A.J. Bow who absolutely refused to drop anything throw at him Friday night.
“I knew we were going to be good on defense,” said Pulliam. “We have a lot of leadership in our defensive backs. We knew we had to replace our defensive front because we lost three guys (all-leaguers). That was a big question mark,” but he said this year’s crop of defensive stalwarts have more than made up for last year’s group.
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As it is the Bullpups might have well phoned in their game, falling behind early, and when Lemoore quarterback Logan Ahlin found A.J. Bow open for a 42-yard TD pass with 8:22 left in the first half, took a commanding 21-0 lead.
Bow had a pretty good night too, In addition to his earlier score, he hauled in a fourth quarter 17-yard TD reception to hand the Tigers a 35-0 lead at the 8:07 mark.
Trey Perryman scored the final of his three touchdowns on the night with 4:22 left in the game on a 1-yard jaunt across the goal line. It was a 40-yard pass play on fourth down from Ahlin to Bow that set up Trey’s final score. He also scored on runs of 3 and 58 yards, the 58-yarder coming in the third quarter following a Hanford punt. On the first play Trey broke loosed and outran the defense for the score.
“I have to give a big shout out to our offensive line (for opening the hole),” said Trey Perryman. “I kind of went wide at first but I saw Reggie (Davis) go inside so I just put my foot in the ground and I followed Reggie, and then he just led me all the way in.”
Perryman isn’t at all surprised at his team’s success this year. “I’m not really too surprised,” he said. “I knew that once we got back to full strength that we could compete with anybody. I knew that we were going to come out focused.”
Hanford, which finished the season at 9-1 and 5-1 in the WYL, got its only score on the night on a Ryan Johnson to Brandon Sanchez 19-yard TD pass in the fourth quarter.
