Loyola shuts down Marist in second half to overcome second-round challenge

The turning point in Loyola Academy’s IHSA Class 8A second-round playoff game on Saturday, Nov. 9, at Marist came on the third play of the fourth quarter when the Ramblers were confronted with a six-point deficit.

In a fourth-and-4 situation at the Marist 48, the RedHawks opted to punt.

Loyola defensive back Micky Maher knifed through the line to block the punt and lineman Nick Richter recovered the football at the Marist 38.

It then took the Ramblers eight plays to score what proved to be the winning touchdown on Ryan Fitzgerald’s 11-yard pass to Gavin Vradenburg with 9:32 to play in the hard-fought contest.

Zak Zeman kicked his third extra point and then, with 2:41 on the clock, added a 32-yard field goal for insurance as the two-time defending Class 8A champions advanced to the state tournament quarter-finals by virtue of a come-from-behind 24-20 victory.

The quarterfinal game for the 12th-seeded Ramblers (9-2) will be played at Hoerster Field on Saturday afternoon, Nov. 16, and the opponent will be 20th-seeded Maine South (8-3), which overwhelmed previously undefeated fourth-seeded West Aurora 41-6.

Marist was seeded fifth and went into the Loyola game with only one blemish on its record, a double-overtime loss to Joliet Catholic.

The RedHawks dominated the first half and led 20-13 at intermission.

They began the second half by driving to the Loyola 22 where they were stopped on downs but it wasn’t until the blocked punt by Maher at the outset of the fourth quarter that there was a significant shift in momentum.

It was a pre-planned defensive play.

“Our coaches were preparing me for the moment,” Maher said. “They told me to lay out my hand when I got through the line. I had gotten used to the Marist quarterback’s cadence; I saw that everybody on the line was taking a guy and when I got to the middle of the line I made an inside move to gain extra space and after getting through I got my hand on the ball.“

Maher missed all of last season because of a fracture between the big toe and the toe next to it, an injury he sustained in the third week of summer camp. He returned for his senior season fully recovered but then, he tore ankle ligaments in the season-opening loss to East St. Louis and missed three games.

“Micky came back and ever since he has been making big plays for us on special teams and on defense,” Loyola coach Beau Desherow said. “He’s a great kid.”

Maher made another big play in the final minute, this time in his role as a defensive back, when he broke up Jake Ritter’s long pass deep in Loyola territory when the RedHawks counterattacked following Zeman’s field goal. They advanced to their own 44 before Ritter threw an out-of-character four straight incompletions, giving the Ramblers the football with 39 seconds to play.

Loyola let the clock run out.

“They say ‘Good teams win; great teams find a way to win,’ and that’s what we did today,” Fitzgerald said. “That’s how you win playoff games — making plays the way our guys did today.

“Going into the second half we were losing, our energy was down and they had the momentum but our coaches’ mindset was: ‘We’ve only played half a game’ and we picked up on it.

“You win high school games when you have a good running quarterback and Marist has a great running quarterback.”

Ritter was in the forefront in the first half when he completed all eight of his passes for 81 yards. In contrast, he was 5-for-12 in the second half but he continued to accumulate yardage as a runner and wound up with 172 yards on the ground.

After stopping Loyola on downs at their 12, the RedHawks went on an eight-play 88-yard drive to score the game’s first touchdown. The TD came on Ritter’s 32-yard pass to Gavin O’Brochta in the end zone. The kicker was under defensive pressure on the extra-point and the kick was wide to the right. As it turned out the failure to convert proved to be significant.

Loyola got on the scoreboard with 88 seconds elapsed in the second quarter when Drew MacPherson scored from 6 yards out on a direct snap, two plays after Donovan Robinson made one of the Ramblers’ biggest plays of the half by returning a punt 49 yards to the Marist 1. A delay of game penalty moved the ball back to the 6, but MacPherson’s run made the infraction irrelevant.

The RedHawks immediately regained the lead, moving 80 yards for a touchdown that came on Ritter’s 38-yard run up the middle.

Then, it was Loyola’s turn to counterattack and go back out front. MacPherson’s 50-yard run to the Marist 30 was the big play in the drive that ended with Fitzgerald passing 5 yards to Vradenburg for the touchdown.

Undaunted, the RedHawks regrouped. Their 80-yard touchdown drive was climaxed by Ritter’s 29-yard pass to Brendan Doran all alone in the end zone with 44 seconds to play in the half. Marist had a 20-14 lead and what appeared to be momentum that would carry over to the second half.

“They did a lot of good things both offensively and defensively,” Desherow said. “Our defense deserves a lot of credit for shutting them out in the second half.”

Offensively, MacPherson’s running and receiving, Fitzgerald’s passing and Vradenburg’s receiving were the major factors.

Vradenburg praised Fitzgerald for delivering the two passes to him for touchdowns.

“On the first one Ryan found a way to get me the ball,” he said. “On the second one (for the game-winning catch) we designed a way to get me the ball so somebody else had to get me open (by acting as a decoy). Football is a team game and we won as a team with so many people contributing.”

Another important factor in Loyola’s eighth straight victory was the kicking of Zeman. Not only did the junior add three extra points, his late field goal made it impossible for Marist to win on a field goal, and his punts and kickoffs were outstanding. Particularly outstanding was a punt on the second to last play of the first quarter that rolled dead on the Marist 14 when the Ramblers were in a fourth-and-3 situation at their own 33.

The RedHawks lost a yard on the ensuing possession, forcing them to punt and enabling Robinson to make his 49-yard return that set up the Ramblers’ first TD.

“Zak’s extra points have been spot-on all season and his field goal was really big because it enabled us to go up by 4 (points),” Desherow emphasized.

“I try to stay calm and focus on the kick and nothing else,” Zeman said when asked what was the secret of his success.

Making his success story even more impressive is the fact he didn’t start kicking until his freshman year at Loyola.

“My grammar school didn’t have a team,” the junior said. “I tried out for the freshman team wanting to be a linebacker but I became a kicker.”

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