Mount Carmel outlasts East St. Louis

NORMAL — It became somewhat apparent early on in Saturday night’s matchup between Mount Carmel and East St. Louis that the Caravan were making a concerted effort to try to keep the ball out of the hands of the Flyers.

Perhaps the Flyers should have tried to formulate some sort of plan to get the ball out of the hands of Caravan quarterback Jack Elliott instead.

Elliott, making his first varsity start, made play after play to help the Caravan fend off the Flyers, eventually earning them a 35-31 victory in a battle of two teams trying to defend state titles of a year ago.

“I knew what to expect and I was ready for it,” Elliott said. “I’ve been prepared.”

Maybe it was the Flyers who weren’t prepared for Elliott. He finished with 174 yards rushing and completed 13 of 26 passes for 118 yards. More importantly he seemed to convert, or play a hand in converting nearly every pivotal third or fourth down conversion late in the contest.

“The kid is a winner,” Mount Carmel coach Jordan Lynch said of Elliott. “We trust a lot of kids on this team with the ball on fourth and one in their hands and he’s definitely one of them.”

The game turned tense in the last four minutes when Mount Carmel, who had been controlling possession notably well, elected to attempt a fourth-and-one inside its own 30 with a 36-25 lead. For one of the few times all game, Mount Carmel was unable to convert the short yardage situation. The Flyers quickly took advantage with Robert Battle throwing a 28-yard touchdown pass to Jesse Watson to trim the East St. Louis lead to 36-33 after Battle also converted the two-pointer.

East St. Louis stuffed Mount Carmel on the first play of its next possession, dropping Wisconsin commit Darrion DuPree for a 4-yard loss. But Elliott came through on the next play, bursting free for a 35-yard gain which allowed Mount Carmel to salt away the rest of the clock when Maurice Densmore converted another first down with a short run with just under a minute to play.

Such a rally didn’t look all that possible when Mount Carmel put together a pair of punishing second half drives that both culminated in touchdowns and gave the Caravan a 36-19 lead with just under 10 minutes to play in the game.

This was after a first half effort where the Caravan had already run three times as many plays from scrimmage than the Flyers as it carried a 21-7 lead into the break. It might not have been exactly what one was expecting from the Caravan after last year’s more pass heavy attack guided them to the Class 7A title, but this attack suits this year’s personnel better.

“Well if you look at us last year, I think we only average running the ball 10 times,” Lynch said. “Naturally we’d like to throw the ball, but we know what we have this year and some of the horses. We can kind of get back to what we were in 2019, a little bit with running some of that power read stuff with the quarterback.”

It was a remarkably uneven effort from East St. Louis. The Flyers were routinely flagged for penalties, finishing with 18 of them in the contest. Its offense was also very uneven, especially with TaRyan Martin, East St. Louis’ talented junior running back, sitting out the first half for undisclosed reasons.

As such, East St. Louis attempted no running plays in the first half with Battle scrambling for 22 yards when pressured. When Martin returned to the lineup, East St. Louis immediately went on a ground-based 74-yard drive for a score in the third quarter but the suddenly energized Flyers had dug themselves too big a hole.