Football: Monte Vista, Pitt Both Looking to Rebound

One peak at the Pittsburg High football team's schedule will show losses to Foothill and McClymonds, but that doesn't necessarily tell the story of how Pitt's season has begun.

"They've lost to some good teams," Monte Vista coach Craig Bergman said. "I think they were caught off-guard a little bit by Foothill () and ran into a good Mack team at home."

The Mustangs will try to send Pitt to an 0-3 start tonight at Pittsburg at 7 p.m.

Mack, which finished in a fourth-place tie in the Oakland Athletic League last year, seemingly came out of nowhere to beat small-school power Ferndale and the Pirates, but its success doesn't surprise Foothill coach Matt Sweeney.

"We played Mack this summer and they looked like the Mack teams that were coached by (current Contra Costa College coach) Alonzo Carter," Sweeney said. "They had some monsters."

Bergman said he saw similarities in how the season has begun for both Pittsburg and his Mustangs.

"Pitt is always a team that gets better and they'll get it together," Bergman said. "And so will we."

Monte Vista's season opened with a 28-21 loss to Serra, which used a ball-control offense to escape Danville with a win.

"I think offensively, we played well enough to win," Bergman said. "We just need to get a lot better defensively, stopping the run. We need more possessions."

It marked the starting debut of quarterback Jeff Lockie, who is taking over for current Stanford redshirt quarterback Brett Nottingham, and Lockie was impressive. The junior connected on 21 of 28 passing attempts for 202 yards and two scores. He also ran one in just before the half to tie the score at 14-14, but also threw a key interception.

"Jeff played great," Bergman said. "He made the one error, forcing the ball into traffic, but that's part of being a young quarterback."

The Mustangs got contributions from everyone they expected to on offense. Mike Sullas ran for 102 yards on 21 carries, Bryce McGovern caught nine passes for 103 yards and Dane Turner caught another seven for 68 yards.

Going into the season, Bergman said they were going to try and get the ball to junior receiver Dalis Bruce more this year, but he had just one carry for 12 yards and caught two passes for two yards against Serra.

Monte Vista out-gained the Padres 348-302, but 271 of Serra's yards came on the ground allowing the Padres to chew on the clock with the lead.

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