Lee Pulls Away in Second Half of Tournament Opener

LEE, Mass. – Dawson Reber ran for 198 yards and a pair of touchdowns Friday to lead the second-seeded Lee football team to a 36-7 win over Narragansett in the Division 8 State Tournament.

 

Jaydee Reber ran for 95 yards and two scores for the Wildcats, who pulled away in the second half after taking a 12-7 lead into half-time.

 

The win means the Wildcats will play one more home game this fall – next Friday when they host seventh-seeded Cathedral of Boston, a 63-6 winner over David Prouty on Friday night. The winner of that quarter-final will advance to the Final Four, one win away from playing for a state title.

 

When Friday’s game started, it looked like Lee would win in a laugher.

 

Dawson Reber busted a 52-yard run on the first play from scrimmage to get the Wildcats to the Narragansett 28. Five plays later, Jaydee Reber was in the end zone.

 

Then Lee’s defense forced a three-and-out on the visitors’ first possession and the Wildcats’ offense got the ball back at its own 43.

 

But Lee’s next two possessions came up empty, and it traded touchdowns with Gansett in the second quarter to go to the locker room up by just one score.

 

“Honestly, I think we got a little slow in the first half,” Dawson Reber said. “We had a few too many mistakes that was not to our liking. That’s not us. That’s not who we are.

 

“And we just talked about at half-time to clean it up, watch their deep balls because that’s where they were hitting us. And as soon as we did that, the second half we cleaned it up, and it ended up good for us.”

 

For the eighth time this season, Lee held an opponent to one score or fewer while its offense maintained an average of 38.3 points per game.

 

Another big Dawson Reber run helped set up Lee’s second TD. He went 32 yards over the right side to get the ball to the plus-26 and picked up 12 yards on the next play to get Lee into the red zone. Two plays later, his brother was in the end zone, and Lee had a 12-0 lead.

 

But on its next possession, Narragansett, which just missed a couple of big plays in the passing game earlier in the half, connected on a 68-yard throw from Mason MacDonald to Jordan Baumann. The point after made it a five-point game with 1 minute, 3 seconds left until half-time.

 

Lee’s offense stiffened up in the second half, allowing Narragansett just two first downs until the final four minutes with the Wildcats up by 29 points.

 

In the 20 minutes of game time before Gansett started moving the ball, Lee was dominant, getting a 44-yard run by Dawson Reber in a 70-yard scoring drive on its first possession of the half, a 17-yard completion from David Kirchner to Thomas Lucy in its next scoring drive and a 30-yard run by Seamus Cooney (72 yards, touchdown) to kickstart its 68-yard drive for the final score of the night.

 

Lee coach Tom Salinetti agreed that his team was able to wear down the visitors as the game went on.

 

“[Dawson and Jaydee Reber] were very physical and ran very well,” Salinetti said. “We’ve got a stable of backs, we’ve got four that we really like giving the ball to. And I think as things went a long, you could see that – I mean, I wouldn’t want to tackle Dawson for four quarters. And I think that’ that definitely is part of it. It’s part of the plan.”