By CHUCKIE MAGGIO
A decent amount of the adversity McQuaid faced in its Friday evening rivalry matchup against Aquinas, coach Bobby Bates remarked, was “self-inflicted.”
“We weren’t on schedule a lot, offensively,” Bates explained. “A lot of foolish penalties before the snap. We kind of put ourselves in a little bit of a hole many times tonight.”
The Knights didn’t, however, cause an hour-plus-long weather delay when lightning flashed over Growney Stadium. They also didn’t inflict injury to beloved teammate Owen Begemann, who required a cart as he exited the game, albeit in good spirits, with 5:06 remaining.
McQuaid’s 22-21 victory, its fourth straight over Aquinas, took as much endurance as it did skill. Nearly four hours after they kicked off, the Knights kneeled out the remaining seconds and celebrated their seventh win in seven tries this fall.
Junior Xaye Collier made one of the most important defensive plays not long after Begemann was carted off. Collier intercepted Li’l Irish quarterback Mykel White’s deep pass attempt and returned the ball to the Aquinas 29, setting up McQuaid quarterback John Mahar’s go-ahead rushing score with 2:24 remaining.
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The Knights’ sideline chants “Yard sale! Yard sale!” on key third and fourth down situations, imploring the defense to get off the field as promptly as possible. Collier was the proverbial “salesman” in closing that possession.
“It was a lot of emotions,” Collier recalled. “Begemann works hard for us every day, so we just wanted to go out there in those last five minutes and play for him and get it done.”
Will Benjamin helped Aquinas keep pace as he has all season. Benjamin, who also scored the first rushing touchdown of the night, caught a touchdown to cut McQuaid’s lead to just a point with 1:29 remaining. The Li’l Irish already had an unsuccessful two-point conversion on their ledger but opted to go for the win.
White tried to find Benjamin again on the two-point try, but the pass fell incomplete. The Li’l Irish had no timeouts, allowing McQuaid to run out the clock.
“That’s just a battle of two really good football teams,” Bates commented. “And all the credit to AQ, man; that’s a really good team right there, a well-coached team. I felt we overcame a lot of adversity, but it was a lot of self-inflicted adversity.”
Collier shined offensively as well, bringing in a 12-yard touchdown reception to answer Benjamin’s opening score and also hauling in a 31-yard pass the series before. Collier made four catches, gaining 61 yards. Mahar completed 14 of his 29 passes, throwing for 154 yards.
The McQuaid offense stalled in the third quarter, including when Mahar was strip-sacked near midfield to fuel Aquinas’s touchdown drive capped by Eimaj Giddens’s touchdown run with 4:02 remaining in the period. The AQ defense pressured Mahar and held the Knights’ running backs to short gains but helped wake up the McQuaid attack with less-than-stellar special teams play. A punt that netted just five yards gave McQuaid a short field at the AQ 17-yard line. Sean Oberlies scored the five-yard rushing touchdown, providing McQuaid a brief three-minute lead before Aquinas tied the contest with a field goal.
Oberlies carried the ball 17 times for 80 yards and the touchdown, assuming the brunt of the rushing responsibility.
The first-half weather delay, which was extended another 30 minutes after the first half-hour elapsed, did not noticeably affect either team. As the Knights waited out the storm, assistant coaches challenged the team to respond positively to the imperfect conditions, both literally and figuratively.
“We didn’t talk a whole lot to them. We did make a few adjustments in that time off,” Bates noted. “But when you’ve got an hour-and-a-half break, there’s not much you can say. They’re just getting ready to go and they’re waiting it out. There wasn’t a whole heck of a lot said during that time, just stay focused and let’s keep moving forward.”
Collier pointed out the likelihood of a McQuaid-AQ rematch in the Class AA postseason when asked what another win in this series meant to the team. “We know we’ve gotta see those guys again in another four weeks,” he said. If the sides do meet again in a sectional final, how would that game compare to Friday’s clash?
“I don’t think it’ll be any different,” Bates predicted. “It’s two battles, two teams battling it out. They’re good teams. Gonna have to watch this tape and study this tape a lot, because there’s things that we need to fix, for sure.”
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