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Lackluster game smacks Irish
By Brian Dzenis
YOUNGSTOWN
The message is loud and clear: Ursuline is on notice.
Since Saturday’s 13-3 win against Notre Dame Cathedral Latin to open the Division IV Region 11 playoffs, Irish head coach Larry Kempe has made it known publicly and privately that he was not thrilled at all with his team’s performance.
“That’s definitely a C, a C is being gracious,” Kempe said Tuesday when asked to grade Saturday’s game. “I just think at this time of the year, you have to be very focused, you have to have your physical and mental priorities straight, and I’m not sure we had our mental priorities straight Saturday.”
Running back Kimauni Johnson said the Irish felt the heat.
“[Kempe] really didn’t talk to us individually, he addressed us as a group, he did it in front of everybody and he was straight up mad,” Johnson said. “He’ll let you know if you messed up or not, and he rides us, which is good for us. He knows what type of team we can be and he’s just mad that we aren’t pushing to our potential.”
For whatever reason, the Irish went to Chardon not fully up to the task, a charge the senior back owned up to.
“We weren’t mentally focused for that game, we didn’t come out like we did against Lake Catholic and Cardinal Mooney,” Johnson said. “Everyone’s minds [were] somewhere else.
“I don’t think our seniors realized that this could be our last game and everybody didn’t play to their potential — even me, I didn’t play to my potential.
“I see myself as a leader on the team and if I can shine, then everyone else can shine,” he said.
A lot of Kempe’s ire was directed at his offense, which squandered two chances to break open the game. In the first half, Johnson lost the ball at the goal line and another touchdown was called back thanks to a holding penalty.
Both mistakes were committed by seniors who are expected to be above such gaffes.
Johnson’s fumble overshadowed a night where he rushed for 114 yards. He’s been dealing with a shoulder injury throughout the season. While he took a shot on the bum shoulder while coughing up the ball, he said poor decision-making led to the turnover.
“I made the wrong cut, to be honest, I should have [gone] in when I went outside and was one-on-one,” Johnson said. “I made the guy miss, but they were just coming and there was group tackling.
“It was good on their part and they made a good defensive play.”
Ursuline will go up against undefeated Woodridge (11-0), the top seed in the region, on Saturday and Johnson has to recapture the form he had that’s allowed him to amass 914 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns as the workhorse back this season.
His preferred way to go about it is to run behind 6-foot-2, 235-pound senior fullback Deion Edwards.
“Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of options, but Deion makes it a lot easier where I just follow him and he makes a big hole,” Johnson said.
“He’s physical, you know that whoever is in front of him, he’s running them down, he’s just comes to play every game,”
Edwards’ role in the offense doesn’t lead to the big time stats Johnson has, but he’s not invisible on defense. Edwards’ two sacks, one of which came during one of NDCL’s last three drives that were all stuffed on fourth down, helped lead a defense that limited the Lions to 181 total yards.
“I had to play a little bit of outside linebacker and on the line,” Edwards said. “Our D-line basically won the game for us.”
Edwards and senior Jabbar Price are devastating along the defensive line due to their ability to not just rush the passer, but be effective in open space. This allows Ursuline to mix things up more.
“If you look at traditional defenses, we only would use only two of what we call ‘big guys,’ the rest of the guys may be big — Deion is big and Jabbar is big — but these guys can run and you got to have athletes to play defense,” Kempe said.
“Offensively, we’ve asked Deion to play fullback, a little tailback, some tight end and some slot and he’s handled it with great poise and I complement him on that because if I’m an H-back, here’s what I have to do, if I’m slot, here’s what I have to do.
“So there’s a number of things that we’ve asked Deion to do that he has handled it very well.”
Ursuline heads to Hudson Memorial Field in Hudson on Saturday. Kickoff is at 7 p.m.
“We got a wake-up call moment, it’s time to move forward,” Johnson said. “It’s time to go back to playing Ursuline football.”