Spring Valley’s defense stifles Mojave

The Spring Valley football team hasn’t had much to celebrate during the program’s first 11 seasons, but that might be about to change.

The Grizzlies (4-2, 3-1 Sunset League) put on an impressive defensive display Thursday night in a 19-6 win over Mojave (4-2, 2-2). The win puts the Grizzlies in a tie with Sierra Vista for first place in the Division I-A Sunset League.

“This is the hugest win I think we’ve ever had,” senior running back/free safety Michael Bianco said. “We are No. 1 now and this is the first time the Grizzlies have been No. 1 in their division and our first road win in two years.”

Spring Valley held the Rattlers to 182 yards of total offense and shut down Ty Flanagan, Southern Nevada’s rushing leader, limiting him to just 5 yards on six carries. The Grizzlies also intercepted four Zack Arave passes. Bianco picked off two passes, and Branden Peterson and Dustin Kekahuna-Kahue each intercepted one. Raheem Edmonds and Kekahuna-Kahue each recorded a sack for the Grizzlies.

“They have a heck of a run game,” Spring Valley coach Marcus Teal said. “(Flanagan) is one of the best, if not the best in town. We stopped the run like we wanted to and scored points like we wanted to do. We really felt that if we could score three touchdowns we really had a good chance to win the game. I’m so proud of these guys for doing that.”

After a scoreless first quarter, Spring Valley quarterback Christian Tasi led his team on a 13-play, 90-yard drive that was capped by a 25-yard TD run by Tasi.

The Rattlers answered quickly when Davion Fletcher broke free for a 65-yard touchdown run to make it 6-6 midway through the second quarter.

Mojave had the chance to take the lead early in the fourth quarter when it drove down to the Spring Valley 9, but a holding penalty stalled the drive.

After the teams exchanged punts, the Grizzlies got the ball on the Mojave 36 with 4:27 remaining in the game. On the first play of the drive, the Rattlers were called for a roughing the passer penalty. Six plays later, Bianco crashed into the end zone on a 1-yard run with 2:16 remaining to give the Grizzlies a 13-6 lead. Bianco finished the game with 115 yards on 23 carries.

He’s doing a lot of things for us this year, and he just continues to play hard,” Teal said of Bianco. “He runs to win and he plays defense to win, and he does really great.”

On Mojave’s next possession, Kekahuna-Kahue intercepted an Arave pass with 2:08 remaining in the game. The Rattlers were able to force a punt and got the ball back at their own 5-yard line with 21.1 seconds left in the game. But Arave’s next pass was intercepted by Bianco, who returned it 18 yards for a touchdown to seal the win.

“For us, in the 11 years we’ve been around, we haven’t had too many big games,” Teal said. “(In 2006), we had a big game against Gorman, and we got that (win). We focused on this one as the next big one, not because of who we were playing or the stakes in this game, but for us to understand that we are a good football team and we can play with anybody.”