WEEK ONE FOOTBALL: Cerritos defense sets the tone early against Gahr, offense takes over in second half

Cerritos High senior Suvan Pradhan glides into the end zone for the final touchdown in last Friday’s 35-7 win over Gahr High. Pradhan scored from four yards out and was his second carry of the night. PHOTO BY DAVE KY.

September 1, 2025

By Loren Kopff • @LorenKopff on X

The latest installment of the annual battle for the Silver Milk Jug between Cerritos High and Gahr High lacked the offensive fireworks that has been symbolic of this longstanding rivalry which was knotted at 24 wins apiece enter last Friday’s affair. Normally, one could find either team heading into the locker room after 24 minutes of play with double digit points.

Just two seasons ago, the game was tied 13-13 after the opening quarter before Gahr rallied for two touchdowns in the fourth quarter in a 27-20 win. Last season, a scoreless opening quarter turned into a 16-0 halftime lead for Cerritos, which would win 37-0.

But on the night before the legendary former college football head coach Lee Corso put on his final headgear during the popular ESPN College GameDay pregame show, it would only be fitting that his signature call of ‘not so fast my friend’ could be echoed out throughout the capacity crowd at Dr. Hanford Rants Stadium.

Cerritos led 7-0 at the half, but the defense gave way to the offense in the third quarter, and the Dons scored three times in the stanza and once again in the fourth quarter in a 35-7 win over the Gladiators. This is the second straight win over Gahr and the third in last four seasons. Before that, the Gladiators had won 13 straight in the series.

“The score…I guess it was about accurate,” said Cerritos head coach Demel Franklin. “But we played so sloppy; oh my god, in the first half we got seven points. Our offense is not great right now, but our defense is really good.

“It’s frustrating; I’m looking and [wondering], what is this,” he later said. “It’s just our mistakes; we’re making mistakes one at a time. We have to be better at figuring out when these guys are going to implode.”

“I thought both teams played pretty well,” said Gahr head coach Greg Marshall. “But offensively, we’re dysfunctional right now; we’re just not very good. So, you figure if we get the offense on track with the defense we’re playing, we’re going to be okay down the road. But it’s not ready yet.”

The Cerritos defense made its presence known immediately as senior Tyler Ky sacked Gahr senior quarterback Roman Acosta for a six-yard loss on the second play of the game. Three plays later, and after Acosta found sophomore wide receiver Bryant Riley for a 28-yard gain, senior Bailey Crawford sacked Acosta for a seven-yard loss. Then after a false start infraction, Acosta was sacked again, this time by junior Noah Schaffer for a nine-yard loss.

After getting to the Cerritos 39-yard line after the Riley reception, Gahr was forced to punt from its own 43-yard line, and after both teams were held on downs on the next two drives, Cerritos ended the scoreless tie with 1:24 left in the quarter.

On third and nine from its own 46-yard line, senior quarterback Justin Sagun connected with junior wide receiver Terrence Grissom for a 39-yard gain. Three plays later, Sagun found him again, this time in the back left corner of the end zone for the score.

Cerritos would have just one drive in the second quarter, which lasted 3:12 and ended on downs. That came after the Gladiators had their longest drive of the game. Starting near midfield, the hosts put together 12 plays but gained only 13 yards because of two more sacks totaling 13 yards in losses. But Gahr was aided by two 15-yard Cerritos penalties and on fourth down from the 25-yard line, sophomore Matthew Barcelos came up short on a 42-yard field goal.

“Every time I looked down, we’re getting behind the sticks with the penalties,” said Marshall. “We have to play cleaner, that’s all it is. But that’s from not knowing how we’re going to win to play football. Like I said, we’re dysfunctional right now on offense.”

“It’s our defense, so we have a new defensive coordinator; my brother Devin Franklin who’s super aggressive, blitzes inside,” said Franklin. “We’ve been coaching together for 30 years in high school and youth football, so we’re not afraid of anything. I just think how we train our kids with the conditioning we’ll outlast most teams.”

In the unusually low-scoring first half, Cerritos ran 20 plays for 104 yards and had the ball for nearly seven and a half minutes while Gahr has 12 more plays but could get just 77 yards. Nine of those plays went for negative yardage and another nine plays went for less than 10 yards.

“We started good, but we gave up one on defense,” said Ky. “But I’m proud of our effort and everything’s good. Everything went as planned; we watched film, we executed, and we got the job done.

“That’s what the Dons are known for; come out hard on defense and then we let the offense carry the way,” he later said. “That’s how we always do it.”

“I think in a rivalry, you kind of have to throw stuff out because…I know his superpowers and he knows mine,” said Franklin of his counterpart head coach. “So I need to give enough credit to that. We had to figure them out, kind of take their best shot and once we saw what they had, this is our counterpunch. We always make adjustments at halftime; that’s one think I make sure of.”

The third quarter would be what the fans came to see as both teams scored on the first four drives of the stanza. Cerritos received the ball to begin the second half and parlayed a 10-play, 68-yard drive into a one-yard sneak by Sagun just over four and a half minutes into the stanza. Gahr was set to punt on its first possession of the second half, but a mishap resulted in a block from senior defensive back Labrenton Wilson, then a scoop and score for Ky who needed just eight yards to make it 21-0 with 4:55 remaining.

The Dons (1-1) kept that momentum going into its next drive as Wilson gained eight and 14 yards on a pair of runs before senior running back Jayden Bagaygay had runs of five and 20 yards, the latter leading to a touchdown and a 28-0 lead.

“The punter missed the ball, then Wilson blocked it, and I just scooped and scored,” said Ky. “That’s how I saw it; I just ran and got [a straight path] for the touchdown.”

Gahr (0-2) would snap a six-quarter scoreless drought against the Dons when senior running back Jaidyn Backus picked up 46 yards on the first play of the drive to get the ball to the five-yard line. Four plays later, sophomore De’Mir Cunningham went in from a yard out.

On the ensuing possession that lasted into the fourth quarter, Bagaygay had a 15-yard reception and Wilson added a 21-yard run, leading to a four-yard touchdown run from senior Suvan Pradhan for the game’s final touchdown.

Acosta was seven of 14 for 35 yards but was sacked five times and ran the ball 17 times with the longest gain being 10 yards. Backus rushed four times for 57 yards while Cunningham added 10 yards on nine touches. Throughout the week and film-watching sessions, the focus for Cerritos was on Acosta, given that he was virtually the lone source of offense in a 41-0 loss to Valley Christian High the previous week.

“Clearly the quarterback, Acosta,” said Franklin. “I didn’t realize he’s a good runner. On film, you could see him run a little, but in person, he’s absolutely impressive. I tip my hat to him.”

“Our number one focus was their screen, but they couldn’t execute it because we were all there,” said Ky. “We stopped them every time.”

Defensively for Gahr, senior safety Malachi Williams had six and a half tackles while senior safety Alexander Gutierrez pitched in with four and a half tackles. Cerritos also gained positive yardage in all but three of 53 plays.

“I think we made quite a bit [improvements] actually,” said Marshall of his defense. “We’re just trying to find ourselves offensively, but defensively I thought we played really well. We gave up a couple of [long] passes; last week we gave up five [big] passes. Then in the second half, a couple of guys went down [with injuries].

“I don’t know where we’re going to go with the offense because we don’t have an identity,” he later said. “We tried to throw a little bit this week, and they exposed our left tackle; they kept going around him. So we had to double back, then we dropped some balls. We’re just not very good on offense right now. We thought we would be able to run like we did last year. But we’re finding out we can’t. We have two weeks to find out what we can do.”

For Cerritos, Sagun completed nine of 15 passes for 110 yards with Grissom catching three of them for 57 yards. Bagaygay led the ground assault with 76 yards on 13 carries while Wilson added 54 yards on nine rushes.

“That kid is getting better and better,” said Franklin. “He’s waited his turn; his brother Jeremiah Bagaygay did great things here and now it’s his turn. He’s a senior and it looks like he’s ready.”

Cerritos has now defeated Gahr in consecutive seasons for the first time since winning six straight over the Gladiators from 1999-2004. And while this may be one of the biggest city rivalries around, there wasn’t much hoopla during the week coming from the Dons.

“We were taught to keep quiet and let our game do the talking,” said Ky. “But we watched film, we studied and got the win. We saw exactly how they were; every play we just executed and came down hard.”

The Dons will be on the other sideline at Dr. Hanford Rants Stadium on Friday when they host Portola High, who they defeated 21-14 last season to end a four-game losing streak to the Irvine-based school. Meanwhile, Gahr has a bye before travelling to Valencia to meet up with Trinity Classical Academy on Sept. 12.

“This is perfect,” said Marshall of the bye. “We had two games and win, lose or draw, not that we don’t care, but that’s not the biggest thing. Now we have two weeks of this group [to figure out] what can this guy do, what can that guy do and what can we do to put it together. Now, if we go, after two weeks, looking the same, then we have issues. We should look completely different by our next game.”