DANA POINT — Dana Hills possessed the ball for just 14 minutes in its football game against Westlake on Friday and ran 20 fewer offensive plays.
It didn’t matter.
Dana Hills beat Westlake 28-17 in the first round of the CIF Southern Section Division 4 playoffs at Dana Hills High.
The Dolphins (9-2) will host top-seeded Chino Hills in the quarterfinals Friday, Nov. 13.
Despite only having the ball for less than a third of the game, Dana Hills’ offense seemed to always get a big play in crucial spots. Three of the Dolphins’ four touchdowns were on plays of 50 yards or greater and two of them were on third downs.
“We’re not holding anything back,” Dana Hills coach Tony Henney said. “You go home if you hold anything back.”
Carter Anderson and Jack Norman connected for two long touchdowns for Dana Hills from 89 and 61 yards out. Norman caught five passes for 181 yards and Anderson threw for 219 yards with three touchdowns.
“We game plan those plays all week in practice and it’s good to see it work in the game,” Norman said.
Westlake (7-4) kept the game competitive due to a Herculean effort from running back Erik Green. The Warriors were playing with their third-string quarterback and Green ran for 231 yards on 38 carries with a touchdown.
“What a player,” Henney said of Green. “I knew right away after the second series that they were going to give him the ball almost every play because he wasn’t playing defense and he usually does. I said, ‘Oh man. We are getting a heavy dose of this guy tonight.’ But our defense made some stops when we had to.”
Dana Hills jumped to an early lead against Westlake which ended up being critical. Anderson connected with Norman for an 89-yard touchdown on Dana Hills’ first offensive play.
A few plays later, Andrew Williams had an interception for Dana Hills which set up a 9-yard touchdown pass from Anderson to Colin Ridgley to give the Dolphins a 14-0 lead just nine minutes into the game.
“It was huge,” Henney said. “I thought we needed a spark early, otherwise with their running game, we were going to give them confidence. They found it anyway but scoring early was big.”
Those points were the only points the Dolphins would score for 27 minutes of game time. Green ran for a 7-yard touchdown in the second quarter for Westlake and Owen Rockabrand Kneizeh threw a 25-yard touchdown pass to Cal commit Charles Davis to enter halftime with a 14-14 tie.
Late in the third quarter, Anderson threw a 61-yard touchdown pass to Norman to give the Dolphins a 21-14 lead.
Stanford commit Gabriel Goroyan made a 33-yard field goal for Westlake to cut the lead to 21-17. Goroyan is the top-ranked kicker in the state according to Chris Sailer Kicking.
With three minutes remaining in the game, backup quarterback Caden Marquis ran for a 50-yard touchdown for Dana Hills to put the game out of reach for Westlake.
Eduardo Castellano led Dana Hills in tackles. Ryan Blake and Noah Carter combined for a sack for the Dolphins.
Dylan Bruns had a sack for Westlake and Trevor Zdenek had multiple tackles for a loss.
Henney previously was the head coach at Westlake from 2015-2016 before being fired after just two seasons.
“I’m just happy to get to keep coaching these kids,” Henney said. “I told them, ‘my history with Westlake is 10 years ago and has nothing to do with you guys. I want to keep coaching you guys so we have to keep winning.’ The kids really played hard for each other.”