Centaurs must win their remaining games to have playoff consideration

     The 3-4 Centaur varsity football team has already played seven games but the next three games are the key to their season.  If they win their remaining three games they will be in third place in the Ocean league which will put them in position to claim an at-large bid in the CIF playoffs.  The most important part of their season starts Friday night.

     Culver City travels to Santa Monica Friday night to play the Vikings at 7 p.m. at Santa Monica College.  Santa Monica is 0-7 overall and 0-2 in the Ocean league.  On October 30, they battle Hawthorne, who are currently 2-5 and their last game of the regular season is against Beverly Hills who are currently 0-7. Both of those games will be at home.

     “I am pretty confident that we will be highly considered for the playoffs if we win these next three games,” said Culver City head coach Jahmal Wright after their 42-31 loss on the road to El Segundo last Friday.  “We have played the top two teams in our league down to the wire so we feel like we will be in a good position.”

     Against El Segundo the Centaurs had a 21-14 half-time lead.  When the third quarter began Culver City continued to put pressure on the Eagles until quarterback Jonathan Martin injured his knee after making a long run down the north side lines. Although his replacement, Bryce Lewis-Wolfe played well, it’s hard to replace one of the best quarterbacks in the league.  “Once Jonathan went out our offense had a hard time recovering what we were doing in the first half, but Bryce did a good job,” said Wright.

     Although their next three opponents have losing records the worst thing the Centaurs can do is take those teams lightly.  “We need to keep going all the way down to the wire,” said longtime assistant coach Cornell Myles after the loss to El Segundo.  “We have to keep playing all the way to the end.  This game hurts real bad because we let them off the hook.  We just need to bounce back and may sure we play one game at a time and then try to get a wild card bid into the playoffs.”

     Culver City has a lot of players who have played outstanding football this year but Mason Mulvihill continues to be at the top of the list. “We need to stay together as a team,” said Mulvihill after the El Segundo game.  “If Jonathan is not ready to play then we need to put our faith in Bryce. I expect our team to stay focused the next three weeks.”

     Longtime El Segundo coach Steve Shevlin knew Culver City would be ready to play.  “We expected Culver City to be ready to play a great game,” said Shevlin.  “Coach Wright always has his teams ready to play.  We were fortunate to come out with a victory.  I told our team that Culver City has a lot of history of having very good football teams.  We knew that they were not going to back down.  They gave us everything we could handle.”

     The 10-7-1 Culver City girls’ volleyball team will face first place El Segundo today inside the Del Goodyear gym on the Culver City campus at 4 p.m. On Saturday they play three games in the Chadwick Varsity Tournament and next Wednesday they battle second place Santa Monica at home at 4 p.m.