St. Edward back blasts past IC Catholic
Today's youth has no direction? St. Edward running back Dwayne Allen Jr. is loaded with direction.
He sprinted, veered, shaked and baked and bounced 30 times for 239 yards and 3 touchdowns, and at safety he added an interception. It all pointed to a 35-28 Green Wave win over Metro Suburban Conference crossover rival IC Catholic Prep on Saturday at Lewis Stadium in Elmhurst.
“I'm not really like a north-and-south runner, I'm more of an east-to-west and then north-south,” said the junior back. “But I try to get the ball, then go as straight as I can and try to make people miss as I'm running, too.”
St. Edward coach Mike Rolando said, “I was excited to see him run on turf, and he didn't disappoint.”
Neither did his team, able to come out of its postgame huddle yelling “4-and-O!” for the first time since 2010.
“It's a huge win for us,” Rolando said. “Won both our crossovers against some pretty stiff competition (IC and Riverside-Brookfield) and now we go into conference play 4-0 with some confidence and looking good. Proud of my boys.”
IC Catholic (1-3) never quit, freshman Luke Ricobene passing the Knights downfield to set up Jordan Rowell's 6- and 3-yard touchdown runs in the last 4:07 of the game. Starting quarterback Rhashaun Epting, a great athlete but less a passing threat than Ricobene, carried 11 times for 110 yards with a first-quarter 70-yard touchdown run.
St. Edward gifted the first of Rowell's scores, attempting to pass for a first down inside of two minutes with a 14-point lead. Instead, IC's Matt Sutton intercepted.
Maybe St. Edward was returning the favor. After the Green Wave led 14-7 at halftime on Joe Mullen touchdown passes to Nick Duffy and Brandon Ostrander, the ball bounced back and forth.
“Missed opportunities,” Epting said of the Knights' 2 lost fumbles and an interception, “and if we could have those back and capitalize on them we would come out victorious.”
Epting's own interception led to teammate Max Eichhorn's game-tying touchdown run at 8:20 of the third. Less than two minutes later there came Allen, evading outside traffic on a 42-yard touchdown to give St. Edward the lead right back.
St. Edward gained two more turnovers — defensive end Dan Howell's fumble recovery and Allen's interception, wresting the ball away from a Knights receiver at St. Edward's 2-yard line.
Allen made it 28-14 after three quarters on a 7-yard run inside guard Augustus Nottolini's block, and 35-14 with 8:12 left in the game on his 77-yard touchdown run.
In between IC Catholic fumbled a center exchange at the St. Edward 2-yard line, which if successful would have pulled the Knights within 28-21 late in the third quarter.
“I think we killed ourselves in that game,” said IC coach Bill Krefft “We had two turnovers and one going in that killed us. Then the other one, just fumbling inside our own 20 is inexcusable. Shooting ourselves in the foot and letting big runs, that's not typical of us.”
“We knew this was going to be our biggest game and we knew that we wanted to be 4-0,” Allen said. “There's not that many teams that say they have been 4-0, and we want to be one of them and we want to make some history this year.”