There are high school football coaches that talk about how great their defense performed after a 49-48 win; Blanchet Catholic School’s football team is disappointed when they give up 14 points in a game.
And they’ve only done that twice all year.
The 48 points that Blanchet has allowed this season is the fewest allowed by any team in the state regardless of classification.
“It’s a major source of pride,” said senior defensive back Nick Orlandini, a first-team all-league defensive back. “The saying goes defense wins championships. That’s true. If you’re defense isn’t good then your offense is fantastic, well the other team’s going to score probably more than you are.”
Blanchet’s Jack Coen (No. 2) and Denver Bogat try to take down Scio’s Dru Cook in a PacWest Conference game on Friday, Oct. 14, 2016, at McCulloch Stadium in Salem.
The defensive numbers are astounding.
Blanchet (9-2) has held opponents to an average of 4.4 points per game and shut out six opponents.
That kind of success brings a confidence along with it.
“The saying on our sideline is always throughout the game, preserve the egg, keep the zero on the other side of the scoreboard,” said defensive back Jack Coen, a second-team all-league player.
“It’s always been a thing where if we can keep the other team from scoring it doesn’t matter how many points we score.”
No. 8 seed Blanchet plays No. 14 seed Salem Academy, a PacWest Conference rival, in the OSAA Class 3A state playoffs at 11 a.m. Saturday at Cottage Grove High School.
When Blanchet lost 14-10 to Salem Academy in September, it was a key turning point in the season.
“Salem Academy was our second loss this season, and that served almost like a wake-up call that we needed to prepare better during the week and then execute better on game day,” said senior linebacker Jared Myers, a second-team all-league player.
“I think after that second loss of the season it was just a wake-up call and then we just started keeping that focus and keeping our effort and executing on Fridays.”
The architect of this ridiculously successful defense is defensive coordinator Baltazar Campuzano, in his third year in the position.
In his first year, 2014, Blanchet held opponents to an average of 12.4 points per game; in 2015 Blanchet held opponents to 15 points per game; this season Blanchet is holding opponents to 4.4 points per game.
Campuzano insists the thing he’s done that has had the biggest impact is to put players in positions where they fit.
“I don’t do anything schematic for anybody because I don’t want to worry about what they do, I want to worry about what my kids can do and what they can’t do,” Campuzano said.
“We just recognize what kids can do and we try to put them in something we think they can do, more catered toward their skills as a coaching staff. We scheme around that situation of what they can do better and how it works schematically against that team we’re playing.”
Shortly after Justin Hubbard was hired as Blanchet’s head coach in 2012, Hubbard was at an alumni basketball game at Amity and heard that Campuzano was out of the military and might be interested in coaching.
He hired Campuzano on as an assistant starting that fall, and Campuzano went to work under defensive coordinator Jon Tromblay, who had been the defensive coordinator for Hubbbard and Campuzano as players when they were teammates on Amity’s state championship teams from 1999 to 2001.
It’s not surprising that what Blanchet runs is similar to what Tromblay did with great success.
“All the base principals are there,” Hubbard said. “When you become a coach, you always go back to your roots and to what you know. That’s what Baltazar knows.
“But he’s really taken advantage of the personnel we have. This year, especially, we’re a little bigger up front, so he’s kind of spread that out a little bit from the old package or just trying to rush straight up to the quarterback, and we have a couple guys who can just fly to the football as linebackers. He’s done a tremendous job.”
At the 3A level there are some teams that rely heavily on passing the ball such as Salem Academy, some that run the ball almost exclusively like Scio and some that have a good mix of both like Dayton.
The beauty of what the Cavaliers have done this season is that they’ve been successful against all of them.
“Sometimes the coaches will give us more options to make reads and audible depending on how the offense is set up,” said senior Denver Bogat, a first-team all-league linebacker.
“Sometimes it’s a lot more like Scio week, it was almost the same thing every play, it’s more of a grind. Then there’s weeks like last week where we had to make a lot of changes according to the changes that Dayton is set up in.”
Blanchet held No. 1 seed Dayton, one of the highest-scoring offenses in Class 3A, to seven points in a 35-7 win in the quarterfinals.
The offense Blanchet runs is basically the same wing-T offense that Hubbard and Campuzano played in when they were at Amity.
When you don’t change much on offense every week, you can spend more time elsewhere.
And the defense has been the beneficiary.
“We have a pretty basic offense,” said Cameron Elmore, first-team all-league defensive lineman. “We have a wing-T and you can only do so much out of a wing-T.
“We do add in new plays every once in a while, but we’re pretty much just doing repetitions. That goes back to what I was saying earlier how we spend a lot of time on defense because there’s only so much we can do on offense.”
bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com or Twitter.com/bpoehler