Big plays doomed a Sunnyside title

GLENDALE - What Sunnyside High School head coach football coach Richard Sanchez watched Peoria Centennial do to his team on Saturday looked familiar.
 

It wasn't the 34-0 loss his team suffered in the Class 5A Division II state title game at the University of Phoenix Stadium that he recognized.
 

Sanchez isn't used to losing like that.
 

But rather, the way Centennial (14-0) did it - going for and executing the big plays.
 

"I'll tell you, what we saw on film was what they did to us tonight," said Sanchez after the game. "They don't get small yardage. Throw here or there. They hose the ball down the field and they've got some good kids."
 

The Blue Devils were able to keep Centennial from making such plays in the first half, stopping the Coyotes twice within Sunnyside's 30-yard line on fourth down.

Sunnyside trailed just 7-0 at halftime.
 

But Centennial started the third quarter with a bang, putting Sunnyside on its heels. The Blue Devils weren't able to get their feet back on the ground.
 

Sunnyside (11-3) trailed 27-0 at the start of the fourth quarter.
 

"That is the way, offensively, that we've been playing most of the year," Centennial coach Richard Taylor said. "We'd score in bursts and we continued that today.
 

"Big plays create momentum and shock on the other side. Those big plays were very important to us."
 

The Coyotes started running away with the game beginning with the second-half kickoff.
 

Jarrell Barbour returned it 35 yards to the Sunnyside 40. Quarterback Scott Burgett found Barbour over the middle three plays later, and Barbour ran it in for the 30-yard touchdown reception just 49 seconds into the third.
 

"I got that one-on-one matchup and I made plays," Barbour said. "We came out flat and looked a little shaky in the first half, but we've been here before and we took care of business."
 

Barbour finished with 119 yards on five receptions.
 

On the first play of Centennial's next possession, Burgett hit an open Warren Johnson, who outran everyone for the 62-yard score. Centennial's third possession of the second half was a 7-play, 46-yard drive that culminated in a 5-yard run by Burgett.
 

"It was like a shark in a pool of blood, man," Sanchez said. "After they got up three scores, man, they really turned it on."
 

The Blue Devils' offense, meanwhile, moved the ball well in the first quarter by gaining 101 yards - 90 of them on the ground by running back Jovan Stevenson.
 

But after that, they weren't going anywhere. Sunnyside finished with 167 total yards.
 

"We didn't keep our eyes on the prize and they wanted it more than we did," Stevenson said.
 

Sunnyside quarterback Sammy Olivas was sacked three times in the second half.
 

Two of those sacks were by lineman Pedro Ramos.
 

"I think they were key sacks, but our defense held it together all game," Ramos said.
 

Citizen high schools editor Michael Caccamise contributed to this report