Seniors on the Christian Brothers Academy football team may have remembered that, as freshmen, they had to watch the Brothers suffer a painful defeat to Elmra in its last Class AA regional playoff appearance three years earlier.
That wasn’t about to happen again.
Instead, the Brothers ran all over Section IV champion Binghamton Saturday night at Cicero-North Syracuse’s Bragman Stadium, scoring 21 points in the game’s first 11 minutes and going from there to defeat the Patriots 40-14 to move closer to a second state title in program history.
Both sides had passed tough tests to get here – CBA needing a pair of fourth-quarter touchdowns to put away Cicero-North Syracuse in the Section III final at the Carrier Dome, Binghamton going to overtime to beat Elmira in the Section IV final.
However, it was quickly apparent that the competition the Brothers had faced on the way to a perfect 9-0 mark topped that of the Patriots as the outcome was never in serious doubt.
Wasting little time, CBA took the opening kickoff and marched 67 yards, consuming more than five minutes of clock as it mixed runs and passes and converted a pair of fourth downs. Stevie Scott’s 19-yard run near the goal line set up his own two-yard scoring plunge.
Rediscovering its big-play flair, the Brothers made it 14-0 when Dennis threw to a wide-open Noah Jordan-Williams for a 63-yard touchdown play. Then the lead grew again late in the first quarter with a 53-yard drive where it moved with ease and Scott finished it off with his second scoring run from one yard out.
About the only thing that went wrong for CBA in the first quarter was allowing Binghamton’s Davin Young to return the kickoff 91 yards for a TD, but Dennis made up for that error in his own unique way.
Early in the second period, facing third-down-and-14 near midfield, Dennis was driven by a Patriots blitz well behind the line of scrimmage, but he scrambled off two possible sacks and somehow threw it to Scott for 24 yards and a first down. Dennis went on to score on a two-yard run.
Through all this, the Brothers’ defense had not played a big role, but Paul Aversa changed that with an interception in his own end zone to thwart Binghamton’s best drive of the first half, returning it to the 23, ultimately preserving CBA’s 27-7 advantage until halftime.
Good as that margin was, the numbers were even more lopsided – CBA had 327 total yards to Binghamton’s 36, and Scott had already run for 100 of his eventual total of 137 yards while Dennis had completed four of five passes for 103 yards.
More numbers would follow, as midway through the third quarter Dennis, on a roll-out from the Patriots’ 37, found Jordan-Williams, who made a jumping catch in the end zone for his second TD of the night. Scott scored on a 15-yard run early in the final period.
The win allows the Brothers to come back to Bragman Stadium next Saturday night at 6 p.m. to face state no. 1-ranked Victor in the state AA semifinal. The Section V champion Blue Devils survived a 33-27 battle with Lancaster (Section VI) in the Far West Regional final.
Whoever wins between CBA and Victor gets a shot at the state championship Nov. 26 at 3 p.m. at the Carrier Dome against New Rochelle (Section I) or Troy (Section II).
