I rewatched the game since I was there in person, and mainly watched the Loyola drives. Here's my main takeaway: Loyola executed. We sometimes forget that these are high school kids that make penalties, blow coverage, miss field goals or drop passes. Fitzgerald was 22-29, and from my count only had two bad throws and the WRs had maybe 2 that could be caught. That's efficient.
Loyola was 9/13 on 3rd Downs. The 4 non-conversions ended with FG, FG, INT, 4th down conversion for the win on the offsides. That long drive in the 2nd quarter was a back breaker with 3 conversions of 5/10/3 yds. That's when they were getting that momentum and that drive ended in a TD. Avg distance to convert was 4yds
LWE played a heck of a game on defense. Crazy to say, but the bend but don't break approach worked for the most part. I think Loyola knew the biggest weakness was the secondary and that's why LWE had their corners so far off the ball and were getting crushed by those 5-6 yard hitches. It's hard to blitz when the Loyola O-Line is so big and the QB/RB are such good runners. I think I counted only 1 successful blitz pressure that resulted in an overthrow.
Loyola got the breaks when they needed it. Like I said, I didn't watch the LWE drives but here's what I saw. A punt return with 40 sec left in the half had a miracle fumble recovery by them which would have swung momentum back to East. That onside kick at the end of the game from our view looked like LWE had it, the video looked like they had it, but Loyola must have ripped that out and secured it in the pile. There was a 2nd&22 in the 3Q where the WR had a great twisting catch and then the next play was that questionable pass interference against LWE. DB didn't turn but it looked like there was no contact and the ball hit him first and the back judge chucked the flag instead of the ref near the ball.
An interesting thing that probably helped LWE to save clock was that the refs had some questionable spots on 1st down calls to move the chains on 2nd or 3rd down. Some were very close and every one went to Loyola. I noticed a few quick 1st down calls by the side judge only to have the ball placed down almost short of where they needed to be.
Overall, I don't know what more LWE could have done on DEF other than maybe tightening up the gaps on the corners to contest better. Also, there were a few times in that 2nd quarter where LWE probably should have called a timeout on Defense to gives those kids a rest and slow Loyola down. On that 1st Loyola TD, it was 2nd & 10 on the 13 and there was slight confusion on rotation and LWE showed blitz. Loyola saw that and checked out of the original play and then called that perfect seam pass. IMO, they're 4wide and your receivers are all playing man with no help with a QB/RB that could run past that blitz. I thought it was bad in person and looked bad rewatching it.
On offense it looked like LWE just turtled up in the 2nd and then after halftime. Tried playing hero ball with Williams even though he got some rushing yards. Some of the flat passes were lucky to not be picked off and there was only a handful of designed RB runs. Just a disappointing game plan on offense.
