Tustin doesn’t apologize for routs

Anyone who watched Tustin trounce Anaheim Magnolia by 50 points early in the Southwest Division playoffs might have wondered whether Tillers Coach Myron Miller was the Gordon Gekko of high school football.

Tustin went for it on a fourth down in the fourth quarter and ran for a 50-yard touchdown on the game’s final play, calling to mind the fictional tycoon who said “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good” in the movie “Wall Street.”

Magnolia Coach Dave Perkins, recalling his postgame exchange with Miller, said he “should have asked [Miller], ‘Do you want to go for the extra point too?’ ”

Tustin has kicked plenty of those in recent weeks, defeating Garden Grove Pacifica, 49-21, in a quarterfinal and Anaheim Canyon, 63-28, in a semifinal Friday.

Miller, whose team will make its first appearance in a title game since 1997 on Saturday at Angel Stadium, doesn’t apologize for winning big.

“We’re not throwing the ball, we’re not calling timeouts to score,” Miller said Saturday. “We just run the ball and once the score gets bad, I put in my second- and third-string running backs. But we still run the ball. I’m not going to take a knee on every play.”

Still, couldn’t the Tillers at least have taken one on the final play against Magnolia with a 44-point lead? Miller said he was upset that Perkins continually went for it on fourth down and tried to pad the stats of star running back Robert Cruz against his defensive reserves in a 76-26 game that had long been decided.

“The normal thing to do is to take a knee,” Miller acknowledged. “I got a little heated with the way my kids were treated and pitched the ball to a kid who had four carries all year.”

Said Perkins: “It wasn’t what I would do. . . . This isn’t the BCS. You’re not getting style points.”

Playoff tidbits

Canyon Country Santa Clarita Christian pulled a rare feat in the eight-man Division I playoffs, beating the three top-seeded teams in consecutive weeks en route to the title. The Cardinals defeated third-seeded Avalon, second-seeded Los Angeles Windward and on Friday toppled top-seeded Canoga Park Faith Baptist, 50-28, in the championship behind Collin Keoshian’s 274 yards rushing and five touchdowns. . . . San Juan Capistrano St. Margaret’s 63-0 win over Pasadena Maranatha in an East Valley Division semifinal was the Tartans’ 41st consecutive victory, tying Mission Viejo for the Orange County record.

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