Team

Ursuline

Record	Div.	Conf.
2/8	Div. IV	Independents

By BRIAN DZENIS

bdzenis@vindy.com

CHARDON

Don’t be fooled by the score. It wasn’t that close.

Ursuline opened the Division IV playoffs with a 13-3 victory against Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin, but the Irish (6-5) squandered chances to really break the game open.

“I think we left a lot of points off the board tonight and I’m not really happy with the way we played,” Irish coach Larry Kempe said. “I expect more from our front because they’re a senior group and there’s some mistakes we’re making that we can’t make if we’re going to continue.”

The 13 points the Irish got off two Jared Fabry rushing touchdowns were disappointing as the team compiled 273 yards on the ground, including Kimauni Johnson’s 114.

“We were just thinking too much,” Fabry said. “We weren’t playing, we were thinking when we needed to react. Going forward we have to stay positive and get better. Maybe it was weather. It was cold, it was a good environment, but it could have been a lot of other things.

“We can control all of these things, we have to get back to work on Monday and go from there.”

The red zone was a tricky place for the Irish. After the NDCL (7-4) marched down the field and kicked a 46-yard field goal on the opening drive of the game, Ursuline was stuffed on fourth down on the ensuing drive, then drove right back to the Lions’ goal line on its next drive only to have Johnson lose the ball. The Lions couldn’t turn that boost in momentum into points and shanked their punt to give the Irish the ball back at the 20 in the second quarter.

But that gift remained unopened thanks to a series of penalties — including a holding call that negated a touchdown pass — that backed the Irish up to the Lions’ 32. Ursuline then turned the ball over on downs. The fact that it was upperclassmen making mental errors irked Kempe.

“That’s a senior who fumbled [and] we had holding call on a touchdown that was called back because of a senior,” Kempe said. “You’re going to go as you want to go with your senior class and our seniors have played well,” Kempe said. “This wasn’t one of their better efforts, but they have played better and I expect them to play much better than we did this evening,”

It took until the final minute of the first half for the Irish to score as they capped an 88-yard drive with Fabry’s 7-yard touchdown run.

Ursuline opened the second half with a touchdown drive once again being finished by its sophomore quarterback, but that was the last time the Irish sniffed the end zone as the offense stayed cold.

“It was rough game the whole time, but we found a way to pull it out and that’s what good teams do,” Fabry said.

NDCL was limited to 181 total yards of offense and never got closer than 18 yards away from the Irish end zone. Three consecutive fourth-down stops closed out the game.

To close out the third quarter, the Lions were held to fourth and-5 from the Irish 18, leading to a missed field goal. Then in the fourth quarter, the Lions were stuffed on a fourth-and-1 at the Irish 27 and finally, Ursuline stood tall on a fourth-and-18 at its 36 with two minutes left, ending any chance for the Lions to come back.

“It was very big, our offense was stagnant at times and the defense helped us out and got stops and that’s all we can ask for,” Fabry said.

Fifth-seeded Ursuline moves on to face top-seed Woodbridge (11-0) at 7 p.m. Saturday. The site will be announced today.

“As I told the group in the last couple of days, people ask me if I’m ready to play and I haven’t had a helmet on in 40 years, so our kids have to come mentally and physically ready to play,” Kempe said. “The positive thing is we’re playing next week while other teams are not. We have to learn our lessons and move forward.”