The Aquinas High School football team is inching its way closer to winning a Middle Border Conference championship.
The Blugolds, of course, play in the Coulee Conference, but they beat their second straight Middle Border team in the WIAA Division 4 playoffs on Friday and will prepare to play their third opponent from said conference next Friday.
A critical stretch of plays at the end of the first half and beginning of the second helped top-seeded Aquinas (11-0) beat Osceola 49-7 in a second-round playoff game at the Veterans Memorial Field Sports Complex.
The Blugolds will return to UW-La Crosse next Friday to host second-seeded Baldwin-Woodville (11-0), which actually won the Middle Border this year in dominant fashion.
“They had an 83-yard touchdown pass, and we got the ball back with 1:40 left in the first half,” Aquinas coach Tom Lee said on Saturday. “We marched right down there and scored with 1 second left, which was huge.
“Then we kicked off (to start the third quarter), stopped them on three plays, then marched back down and scored again. That broke things open.”
Those two touchdowns — the first a 13-yard pass from senior Ryan Johnson to junior Brady and the second an 11-yard touchdown run by Logan Becker — gave Aquinas a 36-7 lead and complete control of Osceola, which had 108 total yards in addition to the 83-yard touchdown play.
Johnson completed 15 of 19 passes for 270 yards and six touchdowns to push his touchdown total for the season to 25 against two interceptions.
“He was fantastic and he is so accurate,” Lee said of Johnson, who has passed for 1,874 yards and completed 70.9 percent of his passes. “He took one big sack, which we hadn’t really seen him do before and came back with as good of a performance as you could ask for.”
Three of Johnson’s touchdown passes went to Lee, and two of them were caught by Becker. Junior Michael Jones had the last one in the third quarter.
The Blugolds, who have won 23 playoff games since 2019, will now transition from defending against a triple option to something much more of a mirror image to what they do themselves.
The Blackhawks, who lost last year’s Division 4 state championship game 26-22 to Racine St. Catherine’s, have scored 118 points in their first two playoff games with a solid ability to both pass and run the ball.
“It’s almost like looking in a mirror because they have a nice quarterback, good perimeter athletes and spread it out and throw it around,” Lee said. “We will have to come up with a very different game plan.
“This will be the best passing team we have seen all season, and this is gonna be fun.”
The Blackhawks have passed for 1,676 yards and 22 touchdowns and rushed for 2,894 and 42 touchdowns.
The challenge for Aquinas will definitely be on the defensive side of the ball.
