Complete Box Score and Play by Play
Heading to the locker room facing a rare 21-point deficit, St. Thomas Aquinas coach Randy Dreiling didn’t let his team panic against Shawnee Mission Northwest on Friday night. After clawing all the way back to tie it up, Dajni Brooks gave the Saints the lead for good with a 69-yard punt return for a touchdown with 1:45 to go.
Northwest quarterback Ty Black engineered a scoring drive to give the Cougars a chance to tie or go ahead with 38 seconds left, but his 2-point conversion pass fell incomplete—securing the Saints’ 35-34 victory.
“I’ve been on the other end of that deal where we’re ahead at many times. And if that other team gets a score all of a sudden, hold it, this is a long way from (being) over,” Dreiling said. “We thought if we got a score first in the second half that they might tighten up a little bit. I don’t know if that happened or not, but being down 14 doesn’t sound insurmountable. Twenty one sounds bad. We just made some big plays and started grinded at them.”
The Saints (4-0) started and ended the game with big special teams plays to help edge the Cougars. On the opening kickoff, Payton Ptasnik recovered an SMNW fumble at the SMNW 17-yard line. Sean Carroll capitalized on the early turnover with a 1-yard touchdown run to give Aquinas a 7-0 lead out of the gate.
“Special teams is a big part of the game,” Brooks said. “We needed to execute that just to set the mojo for everybody else who was coming in next.”
The Cougars (2-1) didn’t get rattled by the early miscue, as they shut out the Saints for the rest of the first half. Black had the SM Northwest offense rolling, as he threw touchdown passes of 36 and 14 yards to Blake Reeder and added another score with a 9-yard touchdown run.
Northwest coach Bo Black also dug deep into his bag of trick plays to catch the Saints off guard on two occasions. The first trick play resulted in a Duke Henke 53-yard touchdown run. The second had Ty Black on the receiving end of a 56-yard pass from Justin Mitchell.
“Coming in, we were very concerned about pass protection. We put in some full pass pro sets and the wide receivers were able to get open,” Bo Black said. “They did a great job of covering us in the second half. You can go back to a million different little things and make a million excuses, but they outplayed us the second half. I’m very disappointed.”
Ty Black completed 18 of his 29 passes for 237 yards, but the Saints were able to contain the high-octane SM Northwest offense for much of the second half. Dreiling had high praise for the SM Northwest quarterback after the game, and he was extremely proud of his own signal caller as well.
Sophomore Max Ford gave the Saints the spark they needed to begin the second half when he tossed a 76-yard touchdown pass to Evan Kammerer to cut SMNW’s lead to 28-14. Ford completed 7 of his 14 passes for 183 yards.
“It would’ve been nice to have Blake (Anderson) obviously because things would have been a lot smoother, but man, you’ve got to tip your hat to our sophomore quarterback,” Dreiling said. “Max was crucial down the stretch, hitting some big passes and making some great decisions. I can’t imagine being a sophomore in his position. I’m very proud of him.”
Ford had plenty of help from Carroll and backfield mate Tank Young to help complete the comeback. Young’s touchdown runs of 3 and 1 yards set the stage for Brooks’ heroics. Young paced the Saints with 26 carries for 118 yards, and Carroll added 15 totes for 88 yards.
The second touchdown run for Young knotted it up at 28-28 with 2:57 remaining, leaving plenty of time for the Cougars to answer. The Aquinas defense held strong as they did throughout the majority of the second half, though, and the Cougars were forced to punt it away. Brooks’ big return electrified the Aquinas home crowd and gave the Saints their first lead since 7-0.
“It was just an in-the-moment thing,” Brooks said. “I almost got tackled when I first caught the ball and then I just had to push through and score for my team.”
However, Ty Black and the Cougars didn’t go down without one last fight. Black connected on a 35-yard strike to Reeder and followed it up with a 19-yard pass to Mitchell. A horse collar penalty added on to the end of Mitchell’s catch put the ball on the Aquinas 1-yard line. Ty Black punched it in with 38 seconds to go to pull the Cougars within 35-34, but the failed 2-point try sealed the win for the Saints.
Aquinas will put their perfect record on the line again at 7 p.m. Friday in a home tilt with Lawrence High.
“We’re very excited,” Brooks said. “We’ve just got to come out better next week than we did this week because in the first half, we started kind of sloppy and had to get back into it the second half,” Brooks said.
The Cougars will try to avenge their first loss when they take on Olathe Northwest at 7 p.m. Friday at SM North.
“They wore us out in the end, but I was extremely proud of the way that we played all night long,” Bo Black said. “For a Shawnee Mission school to come in and play a premier team like St. Thomas Aquinas … we probably should have won the game, but I’m very proud of the way that we battled.”
