Acalanes stunned Pittsburg 70-54 on Friday night in a North Coast Section Division I playoff game at Pittsburg High School, The Mercury News reported, ending the Pirates' five-year run as an NCS power and extending the Dons' winning streak to eight games.
High School On SI listed the same 70-54 final among California scores from Nov. 13. Mercury News reporter David Kiefer wrote that Dons quarterback Tyler Winkles accounted for eight touchdowns and 607 yards passing and running. A Bay Area News Group photograph showed Winkles scoring in the second quarter.
The result was not a defensive struggle. A MaxPreps recap generated from official stat entries said Pittsburg piled up 502 total yards, its most since a 553-yard game against Los Gatos on Oct. 2, and that the Pirates' 54 points were their highest-scoring output of the season. Pittsburg quarterback Philip Ramirez threw for 306 yards and six touchdowns with one interception, the recap said, his second straight game with at least five passing scores. Receiver Ramire Lewis had 87 yards and three touchdowns.
Those numbers help explain why a 70-point night was required. The Mercury News framed the game as a genuine stunner against a program that had owned the section for five years. MaxPreps said the win was also familiar in one sense: it was Acalanes' eighth in a row.
The Dons will have little time to celebrate. MaxPreps said Acalanes is scheduled to play San Ramon Valley at 7 p.m. next Friday. San Ramon Valley itself won Friday, 42-13 over Monte Vista, according to High School On SI. Pittsburg's season is over, the MaxPreps recap said.
The shootout fits a broader Friday night of high-scoring Bay Area playoff football, including De La Salle's 63-13 win over Liberty and several other section games decided by large margins, per the SI scores. Acalanes' leap past Pittsburg, though, was the result that ended a five-year reign and put a Lafayette school in the section's late bracket with an eight-game streak intact.
Winkles' eight-touchdown, 607-yard account, as reported by the Mercury News, will be the figure neighbors remember. The official box, as summarized by MaxPreps, also shows that Pittsburg kept scoring until the end. For one night in Pittsburg, both offenses had enough yards to fill a highlight reel, and only one of them is still playing next week.
Kiefer's account was published just after midnight Saturday and later updated, the Mercury News page showed, as Friday night's scores moved through the NCS bracket.