Against Goochland a week ago, with Monticello trailing with only a single possession left, Nathan DiGregorio nearly hauled in a tough catch on the sideline early in the drive. But he tumbled out of bounds and the Mustangs’ eventually failed to take control of the game as time expired.
This week against Louisa, the senior caught it inbounds. And it made all the difference.
“I think it did,” said Monticello quarterback Jhalil Mosley. “Last week when he was out of bounds it was sort of a momentum killer. This week he got inbounds and kept that drive alive.”
The ensuing drive and touchdown gave Monticello a 41-37 lead over Louisa that held up as the final score in a Jefferson District opener for both teams that could eventually prove to have critical JD title implications.
After DiGregorio’s 17-yard catch on the final Monticello drive’s opening play, the Mustangs marched a total of 71 yards in almost exactly two minutes. The Mustangs overcame a fourth down and 11 at the Lions’ 40 with an incredible Sam Patterson grab on a jumpball that, with the help of a deadball foul, put the ball on the 4-yardline. Patterson’s catch set up Isaac Robinson’s fourth and final touchdown from two yards out with 23 seconds to play that put the Mustangs ahead.
“The kid 81 (Patterson) made a — big time man,” said Louisa coach Jon Meeks of Patterson’s catch as he shook his head. “I thought we had great coverage — he just went up and high-pointed it. I can’t be mad about that, he made a great play.”
It appeared just minutes before Monticello went to work that Louisa put together the game’s defining drive. The Lions marched 80 yards on 12 plays and converted a pair of fourth downs while eating up six minutes and 35 seconds of the clock. Andre Mealy, who was incredible on the ground for Louisa with 171 yards and three touchdowns, pounded the ball in on fourth and one from the 16. Mealy broke around six tackles on the pounding, determined run.
Robinson finished with 183 yards on four touchdowns on the night to ignite the Monticello offense. He opened the night with a 51-yard scoring sprint on his first touch. Mosley, meanwhile, went 7-for-12 and threw for 180 yards while rushing for another 47. He also erased the memories of last week’s frustrating final drive against Goochland with a well-run, efficient two-minute drill that gave the Mustangs plenty of opportunities to capitalize and punch it in.
“It was just a whole lot of patience — I was able to make my reads because I had enough time (because of the offensive line),” Mosley said.
Those two final drives were fitting representations of a game where every punch was met with a counterpunch as the two squads went back and forth from the opening kickoff. The Lions trailed for the first time this season at the break 28-22, the result of a wild first half. That included a nifty 10-yard touchdown run by Zack Jackson on the game’s opening drive and a 43-yard pass from Zack Jackson to Michael Cook, plus two Robinson touchdowns for the Mustangs, all in the first quarter. Jackson finished with 115 yards on the ground and another 64 through the air on just six pass attempts. By that point it was clear that whoever had the ball and a decent amount of time on the clock was probably going to get the win.
Monticello took a lot of momentum into the break though, scoring the half’s final two touchdowns as Mosley sprinted in from 11 yards out and then connected with DiGregorio for a two-point conversion on a rollout. He followed that a few minutes later when he hit a wide open DiGregorio for a 30-yard score with 50 seconds to play in the half.
“To Monticello’s credit, it seemed like every time one of our guys missed an assignment they hit us right there,” Meeks said. “It wasn’t like we were missing assignments away from the play. We were missing it and that’s where they were going.”
The facts support Meeks’ gut feeling. Nearly every single Mosley completion came at a critical juncture. The junior quarterback went 7 for 12 on the night, but five of those passes either scored points, saved drives or put Monticello inside the 5-yardline. He averaged more than 24 yards per completion.
With Robinson chewing up the yards in the ground game, that’s all the Mustangs needed from Mosley.
“He’s been practicing and walking around with a chip on his shoulder because he felt like he left some out on the field last week — not necessarily effort wise but execution wise,” said Monticello coach Rodney Redd. “He definitely made up for it tonight.”
But without DiGregorio’s early catch on the two-minute drill? Monticello may have ended the two-minute drill the same way they did last week against Goochland — on the short end of the stick.
“It looked just exactly the same way (as Goochland),” Redd said. “It was the same concept we just got to it from a different formation. Guys like Nathan are Mr. Consistency. All Nathan is going to do is going to come up with the big catch when you need it like the two-point conversion or that last one. That is what Nathan DiGregorio does.”
