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St. Viator savors postseason success

St. Viator had not won a playoff game since 2006.

On Saturday, it took the Lions just one half of football to change that.

St. Viator scored all of its 41 points in the first half to roll past Urban Prep-Englewood of the Chicago Public League at Stagg Stadium in Chicago the opening round of the Class 5A playoffs.

St. Viator (6-4), which is the 13th seed, will travel again next Saturday to play No. 12 Sycamore, which cruised past Westinghouse on Saturday.

St. Viator coach Brandon New was not happy with his team's slow start in the game Saturday after Viator fumbled on its first possession at the UPE 5-yard line.

"That was not the way we wanted to start," New said. "But we picked things up from there. We ran the ball well and the offensive line did a great job. And our defense was outstanding."

Running the ball was one of the things New and Viator wanted to be able to do in the playoffs. And they achieved that with style against fourth-seeded UPE (7-3).

With the offensive line of Adam Kujawa, Tom Cleary, Tony Valentino, Connor Phelan and Jack Lopez pushing UPE off the ball, Viator was able to rush for 205 yards in the first half.

Joey McIntyre was the main beneficiary of all the hard work done up front. McIntyre, who is a junior, had a career-high 110 yards rushing on 12 carries. He also had a touchdown run.

"Our line may be undersized, but they are tough," McIntyre said. "We didn't run the ball as much at the start of the year. But every time we run the ball a lot we've done real good."

After the fumble on the their first possession, St. Viator's special teams made a huge play to get things rolling for them. Luke Fulton blocked a punt and Michael Ragauskis recovered at the 4 and took it into the end zone and the rout was on.

Tyler Johnston (12-of-17, 207 yards) followed with the first of his 2 touchdown passes, this one 20 yards to Matt Darling. Johnston would later throw a 44-yard touchdown pass to Ben Dickey.

"We came out we and kept it simple," said Johnston who also had a 5-yard touchdown run. "We just wanted to play our game. It was our first playoff game and I thought we did well."

Dickey closed out the first half scoring for St. Viator, which had 412 yards of offense in the first half, with a 4-yard run with just over 20 seconds left in the half.

While the offense was humming along the Viator defense was near spectacular.

Led by Collin Rustay, Ben Tietz, Fulton, Valentino, Patrick Murphy, Oliver Perry and Tom Durkin, the first team defense did not allow a first down and held UPE to just 36 yards off offense. The second team defense, which was led by Patton Fitzpatrick and Austin Ruetsche with interceptions, along with Michael Caputo, Shaun Falbo and Dominic Lamick, allowed just 1 first down and 30 yard of offense.

"We knew we had to come out and play hard," said Rustay, who was named as an all conference linebacker this last week. "We wanted to set the tone right away. We knew what we had to do. We watched lots of film and we were prepared."

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