Quentin Burrell and Mount Carmel had margin for error on Friday night, and Loyola didn’t.
Burrell shook off a lost fumble to score a key touchdown in the second half and the top-ranked Caravan beat the Ramblers 35-24 Friday night in Wilmette, pushing Loyola to the brink of playoff elimination.
Emmett Dowling passed for 298 yards and two touchdowns and also ran for a pair of scores for Mount Carmel (9-0, 3-0 CCL/ESCC Blue), which piled up 402 yards.
Loyola (4-4, 1-2), which didn’t play in Week 2, will wait for Saturday’s IHSA playoff pairings announcement to see if its streak of postseason appearances will continue. The three-time defending Class 8A champions last missed the playoffs in 2002.
The Ramblers played like the desperate team they were, rallying from 14-0 down to go ahead 17-14 early in the third quarter. But Loyola had no answer for Mount Carmel’s high-powered offense. Nathan Samuels ran 18 times for 113 yards and a TD, while Burrell had seven catches for 133 yards and Marshaun Thornton caught six passes for 75 yards and a TD.
Burrell lost a fumble in the red zone after a 23-yard catch and Mount Carmel clinging to a 21-17 lead in the third quarter. But the Caravan defense forced a turnover on downs and Burrell caught a 31-yard TD pass for a 28-17 lead with 8:01 remaining.
“My teammates helped me the most, picked me up,” Burrell said of bouncing back after the fumble. “I give that out to [them] to keep my head level and tell me I’m going to get it next time.”
Thornton and Dowling expected nothing less.
“Some people get emotional but we keep their head up, keep them composed,” Thornton said. “And next-play [mentality] because he always comes back and [does] whatever he wants to do against anybody.”
Dowling, who completed 22 of 32 passes, kept going back to Burrell.
“We told him, ‘Don’t get down,'” Dowling said. “… And he wasn’t down. He forgot about it as soon as it happened. But that’s what’s so special about our team. When adversity hits, we don’t shy away.”
One thing Dowling and his fellow seniors didn’t forget was the series history.
“We were 0-and-3 against them all-time,” Dowling said of the Ramblers. “So we had a little bit of a bad taste in our mouth going into the week and a chip on our shoulder.”
Now Mount Carmel goes into the Class 8A playoffs, looking for the second four-peat in program history after winning the last three Class 7A titles. The Caravan won four straight titles from 1988-91.
“We always have some work to do,” Burrell said. “We haven’t played our perfect game, so I feel like once we do that it’ll be scary.”
Loyola alternated quarterbacks Matthew Lee, a sophomore, and Dom Maloney, a junior. Lee was 15-of-24 for 143 yards and a five-yard TD to Brendan Fitzgerald on the last play of the game. Maloney went 6-of-9 for 87 yards and touchdowns of 13 and 15 yards to Joe Haughey. Melo Maldonado had 14 carries for 81 yards.
“They complement each other,” Loyola coach Beau Desherow said of the quarterbacks. “Each of them does things well and we knew that we were going to have to utilize our whole playbook in order to be successful.”
Desherow said the Ramblers will not participate in the Prep Bowl playoffs if they don’t make the IHSA bracket. So if this was it for the season, he appreciates his players’ attitude.
“This team has grit,” he said. “… During the week I said, ‘Just leave everything on the field. You do that, you can walk off and hold your head high, and we’re all going to be proud of you’. They fought, they fought to the very end.”