Fueled by bad memories of what took place at this same stage 12 months ago, and toughened by all the work done before and during an undefeated 2016 season, the Christian Brothers Academy football team was not going to let anyone, or anything, keep them from reclaiming the Section III Class AA championship.
Even the disappearance of a 14-point lead to Cicero-North Syracuse in Saturday night’s AA final at the Carrier Dome, didn’t derail the Brothers in a long-anticipated clash of two undefeated sides.
Between the escapability of Sirvocea Dennis, the timely big plays made by the defensive unit and DeAndre Dowdell’s multiple contributions to a game-clinching drive, the Brothers turned back the Northstars 27-14 to earn its first sectional title since 2013 and deny C-NS its first-ever sectional banner.
“It was a bad feeling to get beat last year (by Liverpool),” said Dowdell. “So this just feels really good.”
“This was our goal at the beginning of the year,” said CBA head coach Casey Brown. “We just needed to finish it.”
The final was something anticipated since September, when it became clear that CBA and C-NS had separated themselves from the rest of the local Class AA crowd.
By the time they got to the Dome, the state no. 7-ranked Brothers were 8- 0 and the state no. 10-ranked Northstars were 9-0. Little seemed to separate them, so it wasn’t that much of a surprise that, as the third quarter of the title game ended, CBA and C-NS were deadlocked, 14-14.
After Mike Matheson’s 44-yard field-goal attempt fell short early in the final period, Taylor Kirschenheiter sacked C-NS quarterback Conner Hayes to force a punt deep in Northstars territory. With a short field, the Brothers moved to the 30-yard line.
Here, Dennis called a run to the left, only to run into a wall of C-NS defenders. Scrambling right and avoiding the sack, Dennis threw to the end zone, where Avion Othman leaped above Northstars defensive back Nate Geloff to catch the go-ahead touchdown.
More than eight minutes remained, though, and Hayes quickly moved C-NS to midfield, where again the defense came up with a timely sack, Tyler Forhan and LeMar Peters combining to bring down Hayes and force another punt.
With 4:39 left, CBA took over at its own 20, and Dowdell, a senior, took over, starting with a 21-yard run near midfield, and continuing when he caught a pass from Dennis over the middle and sprinted 30 yards deep into C-NS territory.
The Northstars burned through its time-outs, but on fourth-down-and-inches from the five-yard line with 1:16 to play, Dowdell, taking the snap because Dennis had lost his helmet on the previous play, bounced off a tackle at the line of scrimmage and dashed into the end zone for the clinching TD. To cap it off, he intercepted Hayes for the second time in the game’s final minute.
Dennis and Dowdell both thrived against a normally stout C-NS defense who did contain the Brothers’ top running back, Stevie Scott, for most of the game.
Only once did Scott break out, on a 37-yard TD run down the right sideline midway through the second quarter. That made it 14-0 after the Brothers took the opening kickoff and drove 65 yards, most of it on three long runs from Dennis, who made numerous C-NS defenders miss tackles on those plays, including a 17-yard scoring dash.
But C-NS did not flinch. Instead, it took advantage of Omar Mere’s punt return and got on the board just before halftime, Hayes throwing a 10-yard TD pass to a wide-open Landry Rogers.
Twice in the game’s middle stages, the Brothers made key defensive stops. An ill-timed Dennis interception by Tyler Days gave C-NS a chance inside the CBA 20 in the waning seconds of the half, but an incomplete pass on the last play kept it at 14-7 going into the break.
Dowdell, offering a preview of his late-game heroics, intercepted Hayes at midfield early in the third quarter, but the Northstars countered by going 82 yards and consuming more than five minutes before Hayes, from the CBA nine, found Watts, who broke a tackle and dove into the end zone, the PAT tying it at 14-14.
At that moment, said Dennis, there was no sense of panic. “We had to just pull through, make plays and execute,” he said, and that’s exactly what happened.
This win, ironically, brings CBA back to the C-NS turf at Bragman Stadium, where next Saturday at 6 p.m. it faces Section IV champion Binghamton in the AA regional final. The winner has yet another game at C-NS on Nov. 19 in the state semifinals against Victor (Section V) or Lancaster (Section VI).
