North improves to 2-0 with a 28-19 victory over Verbum Dei ...
Mary Star overwhelms St. Monica, 20-7 ...
and Palos Verdes ran into a Loyola team that may be among the better squads in the CIF Southern Section ... and lost, 34-0.
Nonetheless, gotta like what Palos Verdes coach Pat Fresch and so many of his Bay League peers have been doing in recent years ... taking on some of the region's giants (Loyola is a six-time CIF-SS Division I champion) with the hope that, regardless of the result, it pays dividends down the road for their young players.
"I wanted to step out of the box a little bit," Fresch said of scheduling the respected Cubs. "We're doing what other teams in our league did. Mira Costa played them last week. Redondo played Mission Viejo.
"At the very least, we've got nowhere to go but up, at least on the offensive side of the ball right now. It definitely doesn't give us a false sense of confidence (like playing a weaker team might)."
Well-said, Coach. A 3-2 or 2-3 team is often more well-prepared for league play than a 4-1 or 5-0 team that beat up on lesser foes, which is why records can be so deceptive the first half of the season ...
And yes, to answer a frequent question, you will see us take strength of schedule into account in our weekly Daily Breeze rankings. Teams don't often make a major leap up the ladder for winning games they were supposed to win (that's called taking care of business) ...
Yes, there is such a thing as a quality loss. If you think you won't see Carson in this week's Top 10 because the Colts are 0-2 with losses to Mater Dei and Serra, guess again. ... and coaches know those quality losses can be steppingstones to league titles or deep postseason runs down the road.
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