Lee Executes Game Plan to Perfection in Quarter-Final Win
LEE, Mass. – At Lee High’s John J. Consolati Field, it is traditional that little kids take over the football field at half-time.
In the second half on Saturday, the big kids played a game of “keepaway” for the ages.
The Wildcats marched 84 yards in a drive that consumed 11 minutes, 17 seconds of the third quarter for a critical touchdown in a 48-36 win over Boston’s Cathedral High in the quarter-finals of the Division 8 Tournament.
Against a Panthers offense that threw for 233 yards and scored on three drives of three plays or fewer, controlling the clock was paramount for the second-seeded Wildcats.
And in the second half, they executed the game plan to a “T,” eating up 19:37 the first two times they touched the ball – both drives resulting in touchdowns and keeping the potent Panthers offense off the field.
“It’s so fun, it’s so fun,” senior offensive lineman Max Daigneault said. “We just get to run it down their throats. We don’t stop. … That was our plan.”
“Hold onto it for the entire third quarter,” senior running back Dawson Reber added. “The entire plan for the third quarter was hold onto the ball and don’t give it to their high-powered offense, fast kids all around.
“We were just like, ‘Let’s keep it away from them.’ And the third quarter, that’s what we did.”
And they repeated the trick in the fourth quarter.
After Reber (137 yards, five touchdowns) scored with 40 seconds left in the third quarter to give the Wildcats a 40-20 lead, Cathedral needed just three plays to get in the end zone on a 55-yard completion from Xavier Roman to Taqaire Bell to make it a two-score game again at 40-28 with 11:43 left in the fourth.
Reber then recovered the ensuing onside kick at the Lee 42, and the Wildcats again methodically worked their way down the field – 13 plays, all on the ground, 58 yards and 8:20 off the clock when Reber scored for the fifth time from the 1.
Jaydee Reber (88 yards, on touchdown) ran in Lee’s sixth 2-point conversion of the game to make it 48-28 with 3:23 left to play.
“I’m pretty sure you know going into it, that was the whole plan, right?” Lee coach Tom Salinetti said of his team’s ball control offense. “It’s obvious. You could see how dangerous the Bell kid was tonight, and he is a phenomenal football player and an even more phenomenal kid. … Huge fan of that kid, but I still wanted him to be playing corner, not wide receiver.
“And that was the plan. We knew it, you guys knew it. Anyone within a 20-mile radius knew we were gonna try to control the clock tonight.”
Lee found itself in a position to ice the game with long drives because it jumped on top by two scores early.
Thomas Lucy’s sack on Cathedral’s first series to open the game helped force a punt for the visitors.
Lee immediately cashed in, going 54 yards for a drive that ended in a 29-yard run by Dawson Reber and an 8-0 lead.
On the Panthers’ second possession, Dawson Reber picked off a pass and returned it 68 yards to the 3-yard line. A penalty on the tackle moved it half the distance to the goal, and Dawson Reber ran it on first down to give Lee a 16-0 lead that held up until the end of the first quarter.
Cathedral started the second quarter by finishing its only sustained drive of the night. It went 67 yards in 11 plays, the last a 14-yard pass from Roman to Bell to make it 16-8.
Lee, which never took the ball without scoring until it kneeled out the final seconds of each half, went 60 yards on its third possession, which ended with Jaydee Reber going 4 yards to make it 22-8.
Bell struck back.
The Cathedral speedster returned the ensuing kickoff 76 yards to get his team within 10, and it stayed 24-14 after Lee stopped the two-point conversion try.
Lee then went 55 yards – getting a rare pass for 9 yards from David Kirchner to Lucy along the way – to take what looked like a commanding 30-14 lead with 27 seconds left in the first half and knowing it would receive the second half kickoff.
But Roman threw a 52-yard touchdown pass to Amrani Lugo with 4 ticks left on the clock to make it a two-score margin, 32-20, at half-time.
Salinetti said what could have been a comedown for other teams did not affect his squad.
“I think some of that is having faith in our offense,” he said. “I think going into that knowing, ‘All right, they scored. And we know we’re going down the field and we are going to score. … I think have a lot of faith and a lot of trust in what we’re doing, and they executed the heck out of it tonight.”
Now, Lee (10-0) gets a rematch with third-seeded West Boylston (8-2), the team that knocked the Wildcats out of the state tournament in the quarter-finals last year.
“We know what to expect from them,” Salinetti said. “We know they’re a really great football team. They’re a very disciplined football team, like ourselves. Very well coached.
“It’s a battle and a challenge we look for. Like I told the kids, ‘We get to fight for another week, right?’ “