Tre Watson rushes for 465 yards as Centennial upends St. Bonaventure

OCEANSIDE, Calif. -- His quarterback threw for 333 yards and three scores. The opposing quarterback, committed to Alabama and ranked the top quarterback in his class, threw for five scores. The opposing running back racked up four touchdowns and 232 yards.

Even on a night where the Honor Bowl orchestrated touching tributes to current military members, military members who lost limbs in battle and families of fallen soldiers, Tre Watson was the center of attention, outshining all of it.

The 5-foot-11, 195-pound Centennial (Corona, Calif.) star running back turned in a jaw-dropping performance with 465 rushing yards on 37 carries and seven touchdowns to spearhead a 69-55 victory over St. Bonaventure (Ventura, Calif.) on a late Saturday night next to the Pacific Ocean. Sure, the offensive numbers were gaudy all around, but Watson was otherworldly with his constant barrage of exciting plays in a game full of them.

The senior Cal commit has always put up huge numbers - but this was on another level.

"Every time I know it's coming to me, I feel like nothing can get in my way but me. That's my mindset, touchdown is all I am looking for," said Watson, who ran for 319 yards last week. "That's what I expect to do."

It blocked out all the other significant stats posted by other players in what can only be described as a shootout pitting Centennial (No. 9 in the Xcellent 25 and 11th in the national computer rankings) against St. Bonaventure (21st in the computer rankings).

St. Bonaventure junior quarterback Ricky Town, committed to Alabama, tossed five touchdowns and gobbled up 273 passing yards while Centennial quarterback Robert Webber went 21-for-30 with 333 yards and three scores. Seraphs running back Marcus Chambers totaled four scores and rushed 26 times for 232 yards not to mention three receptions for 63 yards.

But it has to come back to Watson. He ran up the gut for a touchdown from 19 yards out with 2:15 left in the first quarter to match St. Bonaventure's first score, then after a three-and-out produced a punt, he took the first play of the next drive 63 yards. With 4:27 left in the first half, Watson answered a kickoff return touchdown with an 8-yard jaunt of his own to make it 34-21.

In the second half, he started the scoring with a 1`-yard plunge, then made it 55-28 later in the quarter with a 21-yard burst straight up the middle.

His final two scores were dazzling, as he escaped the fray from 59 yards out with 7:16 left in the game then took it to the house from 22 yards with 4:08 remaining.

"If we would have held him to 150 yards then it's a good game for us. Obviously we didn't do that, he ran for three times that," lamented Seraphs coach John Muller. "You see him in the open field like that, once he breaks it he's gone."

Centennial's prolific offense was its usual prolific self, scoring touchdowns on eight consecutive drives from the first through third quarters. That makes it 129 points in two contests this season. The Seraphs simply couldn't score at that pace, though they obviously showed they can still put points on the board.

They led 7-0 and then got to 55-41 in the fourth quarter after Centennial tried playing its second-string offense and turned the ball over on a fumble. But Watson came back in along with Webber and continued the dominance.

The Huskies actually just wanted to try running the clock out in the fourth, but Watson kept finding the end zone.

"Around seven or eight minutes left, we were trying to play slow-down. But we would score, then they would score," said Centennial coach Matt Logan. "Our whole point is to put as much pressure on the defense as we can offensively."

Logan even gave some good-natured ribbing to Watson and Webber after Watson's final touchdown. He looked as his quarterback came off the field and expressed his astonishment that the offense managed to run the four-minute drill twice in a span of about three minutes of game time.

"We ran it and I scored," said Watson, adding that he was just doing what the plays told him to do. "It's a win-win situation."

As a team, Centennial recorded 886 yards and 30 first down compared with 496 yards and 18 first downs for the Seraphs.

Barry Ware caught a 15-yard scoring pass, Greyson Bankhead hauled in a 16-yard scoring strike and Javon McKinley caught a 42-yard score for the Huskies. For St. Bonaventure, Bryce Dixon caught a 24-yard score to go up 14-13 in the second quarter, Lavan Alston lit up the crowd with a 95-yard kickoff return and later caught a 10-yard strike, and John McGill caught a touchdown pass as well.

The offensive prowess speaks for itself this season, and from previous seasons, for Centennial. They're flat-out amazing. But there has to be something to gripe about, and that must be the defense, which has yielded 97 points in two games.

"It's frustrating, we play good for spurts then all the sudden we look bad. Some of it can be attributed to the offense, that they score for fast," Logan said. "But we have to play better."

They'll look to do that this coming Friday against Long Beach Poly, which was ranked 21st in the Xcellent 25 before losing to Servite (Anaheim, Calif.) this week.