There were questions about the defense despite Brother Rice’s 4-1 start.
The Crusaders now look like a team with all the answers.
Cam Miller and Ricky Smalling continued to be lethal and No. 14 Brother Rice stymied Mount Carmel’s potent option in a 34-14 Catholic Blue upset of the No. 3 Caravan on Friday night at Brother Rice.
Miller and Smalling connected 13 times for 178 yards and three touchdowns as Brother Rice (5-1, 2-1) knocked Mount Carmel (5-1, 2-1) out of its first-place tie with No. 2 Loyola in the league.
“This feels great,” Smalling said. “It is amazing. We played as a team. It was a wonderful thing, just us playing our game. We have a great rivalry with Mount Carmel. We had to prove we can play with the big dogs.”
Rice gave up 35 points to St. Laurence last week and 33 against St. Francis the week before, but the step up in competition was matched by improved play despite the absence of four injured defensive starters.
The Crusaders came up with numerous big defensive plays from undersized linemen Derrick Frye and Derek Burns and defensive back Brian Olsen.
“They are a feisty group, though,” Brother Rice coach Brian Badke said. “They didn’t give up. Their effort was phenomenal. We dealt with some adversity. A couple guys got banged up, guys came in and did a phenomenal job.”
Smalling, a heavily recruited junior, is nobody’s idea of an underdog.
His first TD was an easy catch of a 22-yard strike from Miller as the Crusaders took an early 7-0 lead. The other two scores were almost all Smalling.
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He took a short pass and bolted through the Caravan secondary, creating an extraordinary amount of space along the way to give Rice the lead for good at 14-7.
It was 24-14 Rice with less than three minutes to play when Smalling caught a quick out and undressed two defenders, stiff-arming the first to the ground and juking the second for a 17-yard score that put its second straight victory over the Caravan on ice.
“Oh my God,” said Miller, who was 21-of-30 for 254 yards. “He is ridiculous. I can’t even explain it. The kid is out of this world.”
Mount Carmel was outplayed all night.
A.J. Ries (21 carries, 95 yards) scored both Caravan TDs, a 5-yard run after Mount Carmel recovered a fumble at the Rice 12 and a 6-yard run that cut the Crusader lead to 24-14 with 7:36 to play.
“We were not consistent,” Mount Carmel coach Frank Lenti said. “We had a couple guys out on the offensive line, some other guys have to step up, and we just didn’t get that done.
“We’ll get that figured out. You’ve got to give credit to Brother Rice. They are a good football team. We told kids the kids we’d have to bring our ‘A’ game and we really didn’t all the way around.”
Mike Helfgot is a freelance writer for the Daily Southtown