“Oh, yeah!”

“No!”

“Yeahhh!”

That was the series of yells on the St. Joseph sideline as Knights tight end Scott Cathcart hauled in a pass for a first down, fumbled, then recovered the ball at the Morro Bay 10-yard line. Thomas Sua scored the last of his three touchdowns on the next play.

“The guy punched the ball out, and I was able to fall on the ball,” Cathcart said.

It was all good for the Knights in the end. Sua scoredthe last TD of the game as the Knights clinched the Los Padres League title by winning 27-19 in a showdown for the league championship at Morro Bay Friday night. Sua had a hard-earned 134 yards on 22 carries.

“This is our first (football) league title of any kind since 1992 and our first ever outright,” said Knights second-year head coach Mike Hartman shortly after his players gave him a celebratory water bath.

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St. Joseph (6-0, 7-2) won its sixth straight. “It's all about the kids,” Hartman said. “Not we coaches. They're the ones who earned this. They've worked hard. They deserve this.”

Morro Bay came up a bit short on its Seniors Night after four lead changes, but the news was far from all bad for the Pirates.

“We have to win next week,” Morro Bay coach John Andree told a reporter afterward. “If we win, we're in (the playoffs). If we lose, we're out.”

Not exactly. Andree likely spoke before he knew the Santa Ynez result.

Morro Bay takes on Santa Ynez next week in both teams' regular season finale, but Santa Ynez' Pirates fell to 2-4 in the LPL with a 20-17 loss to Nipomo (3-3) Friday night. The worst Morro Bay can do is a three-way tie for third place with Templeton and Nipomo.

Templeton beat both other teams. Morro Bay defeated Nipomo, so the Titans would be knocked out, the Eagles would get the LPL's third playoff seed and the Pirates would get the fourth.

The Knights play at Nipomo next Friday at 7:30 p.m. in a regular season finale.

Morro Bay was playing without Kevin Scott Friday night. Scott has 1,238 yards rushing this season.

“He has three broken ribs,” Andree said. “He'll be out four weeks.”

Even without Scott, “Morro Bay is a good, tough team,” said Hartman. “This was like a heavyweight fight.” The Knights got enough figurative punches late to win.

“They were a tough team, just like we thought they'd be,” said St. Joseph quarterback Sean Winters. “The fourth quarter was ours.”

Part of the reason the fourth quarter was the Knights' was their converting three consecutive long yardage situations before Sua's last score.

The first two were third downs, then came Winters' 21-yard pass to Catchart, after which he recovered his own fumble.

“That's the kind of thing that wins championships,” Andree said. A 15-yard facemask penalty after Winters was dropped for a four-yard loss helped the drive along.

St. Joseph went ahead for good at 20-19 when John Gregory caught a 22-yard touchdown pass from Winters with 12 seconds left in the third quarter.

Morro Bay's last ditch drive after Sua's final score failed when Joey Baldacchino, Joaquin Vasquez and Shawn Philipps ran quarterback Logan Budd out of bounds at the Knights 18 on a fourth-and-10, three yards short of the first down.

Defensive back Dominic Brunello made a huge defensive play in the fourth quarter. With the Knights clinging to a 20-19 lead, he stepped in front of Pirate Jonathan Coss and intercepted Budd's pass at the St. Joseph 22. The Knights then embarked on their last touchdown drive.

John Wood made all three of his point-after kicks (he didn't have a chance after the Knights' other TD. The snap was bad). That turned out to be important, because Kevin Hames missed after Budd's 10-yard pass to Manuel Lujan put the Pirates ahead 13-7 in the second quarter. Wood made good to put the Knights ahead 14-13 after Sua bulled in from 17 yards out 4:33 before halftime.

That meant the Pirates had to go for two after Budd, who bolted in from 27 yards out for Morro Bay's first score, hurled a 39-yard touchdown strike to Jerome Long put Morro Bay ahead 19-14.

Patrick Cusack's fumbled punt set up the score, but he intercepted Budd's two-point conversion pass in the end zone.

Daniel Rudolph made things happen for St. Joseph early. He returned the opening kickoff 60 yards to the Pirates 35. He made a leaping grab of Winters' pass at the Morro Bay one on the first play from scrimmage, and then Sua scored.

The Pirates made most of the things happen for most of the rest of the first half as they contained Sua. But then center P.J. Cano, right guard Drew Salazar and right tackle Josh Bingham started opening big holes for Sua, and he scored his second touchdown.

Winters helped by completing some timely short passes. “The passing game opened things up a little bit for Thomas' rushing,” he said.

“We have some guys who go both ways, and we got a little tired,” Andree said. “Sua wears on you.”

Nov. 4, 2006