After winning the first two games, St. Joe's season has taken a drastic turn for the worse. In their last 4 games, they've lost 34-21 to Cushing Academy, 35-0 to Blair, 8-7 to Moore Catholic and 26-0 against Cedar Creek. I talked to St. Joe's athletic director, Jerry Smith, during the game today and said that they would have to win today's game as well as next week against a 6-1 Montclair Kimberley team in order to get the 8 seed in states. The 8 seed, in Non-Public A Group IV, would get St. Joe's a game against the national #1 team Don Bosco Prep. It would be cool to be able to say that they played them in their first year of football and if St. Joe's are somehow able to provide any sort of resistance to them, it could really make a statement. There's pretty much no chance of this happening but if they somehow actually won, I think it'd be one of the biggest upsets in the history of sports on any level. If they lose that, they will get in a consolation game for states. With the way the power points stand now, St. Joe's is a point behind St. Augustine for 7th. They have two games remaining against Millville and Holy Spirit. They aren't likely to beat Spirit and Millville is undefeated as well. However, Spirit is a group II school for parochial and Millville is a group IV, so they will probably be able to move somewhat because of the group size. But if St. Joe's beats Montclair Kimberley and St. Augustine loses both, I believe St. Joe's should be able to capture the 7 seed. It's really pick your poison with the 1 and 2 seeds, but I would rather play Bergen Catholic and be on the other side of the draw than worry about playing Bosco. Those are by far the two strongest teams. Even though St. Peter's has bounced back, they still have a couple losses to Montclair and St. Joe's Montvale. Besides that, just Paramus Catholic and Notre Dame are over .500 in St. Joe's bracket, so it could make for a couple pretty interesting games.
St. Joe's defensively has been a pleasant surprise this year and continued to be one in today's game. Outside of the Blair and Cedar Creek games, I thought they played pretty solid defense and frankly, the points allowed are mostly because of the offense's ineptitude at times. This game quickly got out of hand at St. Joe's took a 34-0 halftime lead. Morristown Beard beat Dwight-Englewood by forfeit and beat Sussex Tech. Dwight-Englewood actually lost to Sussex Tech so in those 2 wins, there is not much to take from. At halftime, I saw John Haley, high school reporter for the Star-Ledger and he told me "In the 35 years of watching high school football, this might be the worst team I've ever seen." Personally, I wouldn't go that far. Sussex Tech is horrendous and in my opinion definitely worse than Morristown-Beard. Morristown-Beard is still a prep school so just by defacto, you'd have to put one of the smallest Group I schools in New Jersey over them in terms of how bad they are. They should have put one of their receivers at quarterback because as seen on a couple plays, he had a decent arm.
Matt Olivo had a great day running the football rushing for three touchdowns and 101 yards. He had a 1, 47 and 33 yard run for touchdowns. St. Joe's scored on its first five possessions going up by a score of 34-0 with 10:56 remaining in the first half. Interestingly enough, they were able to build nearly a five touchdown lead on just eight plays. They eventually went up 41-0 early in the 3rd at which point they pulled their starters. St. Joe's defensively had an awesome day, allowing just 72 yards. They were able to force a couple turnovers and played great defense throughout. This was as complete a performance from St. Joe's that there has been this season. They clicked on both sides of the ball and never left any doubt from the beginning of the game. William Palmer also scored on a 1-yard touchdown run and perhaps the St. Joe's offensive highlight of the day was when Albert Myers scored on a 77 yard pass from Ryan Campbell. Morristown-Beard's only score came late in the game when Nick Rella scored on a 3-yard run to make the deficit 41-6 and that proved to be the final score.
Next up is Montclair Kimberley Academy. They currently are 6-1 and second in power points in Non-Public Group II. They beat Cedar Creek who St. Joe's lost to last week. This is an absolutely huge game for St. Joe's and to qualify for states in their first year is an accomplishment and to be able to say they played a great team like Don Bosco or Bergen Catholic will make this season all the more satisfying. The absolute best I thought St. Joe's could've gone was 5-3 and they have a chance to be right behind that at 4-4. The game on Saturday won't be easy, but it is senior day and St. Joe's has an awful lot to play for. I'm going to predict St. Joe's pulls out a close win to get the matchup up in Ramsey against Don Bosco in a couple weeks., but like I said before, it would be better for them to draw Bergen Catholic because they might have a modicum more of a chance. We'll see what happens Saturday.
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