SANTA ANA — Mater Dei football coach Bruce Rollinson doesn’t believe in first-game jitters.

Although the Monarchs weren’t razor sharp in their season debut against West High of Salt Lake City, they made more than enough plays to cruise to a 42-0 victory despite committing three turnovers, including two in the red zone.

Rollinson saw many positives in the Monarchs’ opening victory but didn’t downplay the significance of those mistakes for his team that was named national champs last season and is ranked No. 1 in the nation this season by CalPreps.

“We’re not used to fumbling, we’re not used to turning the ball over,” Rollinson said. “People want to say first game, not Mater Dei. We’ve been practicing since January to avoid those types of things.”

On the bright side for Mater Dei, highly touted junior QB Elijah Brown threw for 285 yards on 20-of-26 passing and five touchdowns to four different receivers.

“I thought he (Brown) was really solid. I thought our run game was really solid, but again, turnovers. If we do that in the desert, it’s a long ride home,” Rollinson said, referring to next week’s game at Bishop Gorman of Las Vegas.

Another positive for Mater (1-0) was its defense, which kept the Panthers (1-1) off the scoreboard and brought constant pressure to West quarterback Isaiah Su’esu’e.

“Whenever you shut somebody out it’s saying we played great defense tonight,” Rollinson said. “We had them shut down and they didn’t have much yardage and completions.”

The Monarchs scored on their first drive of the game, moving down the field in seven plays and Brown finding Jack Ressler for a 19-yard score.

Marcus Harris, Marcus Brown and Jordan Onovughe also caught TD passes from Brown.

Brown was picked off in the red zone in the first quarter on Mater Dei’s second drive and also had some miscommunication on a handoff exchange with Nathaniel Frazier on third-and-goal in the second quarter. Mater Dei also lost a fumble in the third quarter.

Jordon Davison rushed for 85 yards as the primary ball carrier after Ajon Bryant went down with an injury early in the game. Frazier also ran well, tallying 71 yards on eight carries and a touchdown.

“We lost Ajon and that hurt and I thought Frazier stepped up,” Rollinson said. “I was hoping to mix it with three (backs), now I’m down to two, but we’re not ruling him (Bryant) out next week.”

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The Monarchs will face Bishop Gorman on the road next week. It will the schools’ third meeting; Mater Dei won the first two contests.

“There will be a lot of teaching tomorrow and we got to get it right back up and go on Monday,” Rollinson said. “It was a good win and I’ll congratulate them for that, but we’ve got work to do.”