Chantilly football coach Mike Lalli wished there were words to describe what he felt because it most likely would’ve meant that his team didn’t suffer a 52-14 loss.
But in reality, there wasn’t much explanation or analysis he could provide after a 38-point loss to Oakton in the Northern Region Division 6 championship last Saturday.
“[There’s] not much to say when you lose by 38,” said Lalli, whose team was playing in the region title game for the second time in three years. “It’s not the play-calling. It’s not one individual. They just played better than us.”
The Cougars (13-0) scored on their first eight possessions and didn’t punt until the three-minute mark of the third quarter. Chantilly mustered only two first downs in the opening half to 11 for Oakton.
From the outset, Oakton’s defensive dominance was apparent. After the Cougars mounted an 11-play, 74-yard drive, senior running back Torrian Pace was stopped for a loss of three yards on second down and quarterback Roger Strittmatter’s pass was picked off by Oakton’s Andrew Leonard.
On a four-yard run from Pace with eight minutes left in the second quarter, Chantilly finally gained a first down but, two plays later, another Strittmatter interception turned the ball over to Oakton.
<b>IN THE FIRST HALF,</b> Pace was held to 22 yards on 10 carries but scored on a 63-yard run midway through the third quarter to put Chantilly on the board.
“They were a good tackling team,” said Pace, who ran for 2,561 yards this season and 33 touchdowns. “They all flew to the ball, and it wasn’t just one guy tackling.”
The lopsided outcome was a polar opposite of what happened during the teams’ regular-season meeting. On Friday, Oct. 3, Oakton dealt Chantilly a 17-15 loss, holding Pace under 100 yards (21 carries, 73 yards) for the first and only time all season.
But according to Pace, who is still mulling his collegiate options after a stellar season, the Oakton loss was the trigger point for the rest of Chantilly’s season. From there, the Chargers won five of their next six games, losing only to Edison in Week 10 and topping Westfield in the dramatic region semifinal matchup on the road.
“After we lost to Oakton the first time, we picked it up a notch and we knew what it took to win,” Pace said. “We just kept fighting.”
While the Chargers knew what it took to win, finishing the season with an impressive 9-4 record, Lalli didn’t know what to say after a blowout loss in the region title game.
“They were ready to go and we weren’t, and I guess that’s my biggest problem,” Lalli said. “I didn’t have them ready to go.”