The article below originally appeared in the San Mateo Daily Journal and is being reprinted with permission.

Saturday’s game against Chabot College did not start the way the College of San Mateo wanted — especially when the goal was to come out sharp following a less than stellar effort against Laney College the week before.

But with half of the second quarter in the books, the Bulldogs found themselves down 13 and a bit shell-shocked.

“We started slow,” said CSM assistant head coach and defensive coordinator Tim Tulloch. “That’s kind of two weeks where we started slow on both sides of the ball and we just have to do a better job of taking the field on the first series and coming out ready to play. We were a little bit of … we had to get punched a couple of times before we wanted to fight back instead of coming out and us punching them.”

The Bulldogs punched back in a big way, scoring its first big hit behind Maurice Williams and his 73-yard touchdown catch. His score was the catalyst to CSM’s 40-27 win.

“It’s never easy,” Tulloch said. “It’s a rivalry game. It’s a game where we had a lot of adversity and it was great to see our guys fight and respond. Obviously, it would be much better if we didn’t have to dig out of that hole. But I like the way the guys responded and I also like when Chabot tied it up in the second half, we again rallied and finished strong. We didn’t start very well, but we finished.”

CSM outscored Chabot 27 to 6 in the second and third quarters. And after Chabot found a way to tie the game at 27 with less than a minute off the clock in the fourth quarter, the Bulldogs scored 13 unanswered points to close out the game and pick up the win. CSM is now 2-0 on the year.

“I saw fight,” Tulloch said about the Bulldogs going down 13-0 early on. “I saw guys in the heat of battle and when you’re down 13-0 in someone else’s back yard, that’s not a pretty situation and these guys rallied immediately and put three touchdowns on the board. The start wasn’t pretty but the fight and the will to turn it was there.”

Williams hooked up with John Willis on that momentum-shifting touchdown strike with 13:23 left in the first half. It was at that point though that CSM’s Quincy Nelson took over.

Nelson rushed for 101 yards on 10 carries and caught a pass for another 17. Three of his touches resulted in touchdown — runs of 57 and 1 and a catch of 17 that carried things from 13-7 Chabot to 27-13 CSM with 10:25 left in the third quarter.

“I tell you what, Quincy had an outstanding game rushing and receiving for us,” Tulloch said. “Maurice’s big pass kind of kick-started things for us but Quincy finished some plays in the rushing and receiving game. Third quarter we got a lot of tough yards from George Naufahu, he did a great job running the ball. And our punter, Austin Pacheco, did a nice job of turning the field.”

Naufahu finished with 89 yards on 16 carries — CSM’s rushing total for the game was 352 yards.

Chabot responded by scoring the next 14 points and tied the game up with 14:21 left in the game.

But, like Tulloch mentioned, Saturday’s win for the Bulldogs was about facing adversity and they did just that. Less than three minutes after Chabot tied the game, CSM’s Aaron Criswell caught a 45-yard touchdown pass from Willis to make it 34-27.

The Bulldogs sealed the deal with 2:05 left in the game on a 37-yard Pick-6 courtesy of Deshane Hines.

“Deshane did a nice job of reading the route combination,” Tulloch said. “Those guys did a pretty good job ball-hawking. We have to tackle better and we have to swarm to the ball better.”