TOWN AND COUNTRY, Mo. - Two of the St. Louis area’s football heavyweights came face-to-face with each other Friday night.
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Edwardsville and CBC clashed at CBC’s Michael Ross Stadium and the fans who came to the game certainly got their money’s worth.
Tiger quarterback Kendall Abdur-Rahman had a big night on the ground, running for 238 yards and scoring four touchdowns on runs of 80, 40, four and 82 yards on the night and also throwing for a pair of touchdowns to Norman Harris and Dionte Rodgers.
For all of Abdur-Rahman’s effort, though, the Cadets found ways to come up big themselves, getting a 202-yard night from Bryan Bradford with four touchdowns of his own as CBC won a entertaining shootout from the Tigers 58-45 to drop Edwardsville to 1-1 on the year with East St. Louis next on the horizon; the Cadets improved to 2-0 with arch-rival Chaminade coming up next.
“I was proud of our kids,” said Tiger coach Matt Martin. “I thought they fought hard and competed well; we made some mistakes you can’t make to beat a team that good. We have an opportunity to learn from that.”
The Tigers knew what they were going to go up against in the Cadet offense, led by Bradford and quarterback Brett Gabbert; Gabbert wound up throwing for 338 yards and two touchdowns on the night. “That’s a pretty loaded offensive team,” Martin said. “They’re loaded across the board – a lot of mismatches out there. They don’t have too many weaknesses on offense, so I thought our kids did a good job.”
Edwardsville was able to get to CBC thanks to Abdur-Rahman’s passing ability, which, in turn, loosened up the Cadet defense; that and good offensive-line blocking allowed Abdur-Rahman to find openings that he was able to exploit and get off to the races with. “I think we hurt them with some passes,” Martin said. “We had some opportunities to hurt them with the pass so they loosened their defense up a little bit – guys didn’t get open or he didn’t see them open, so he took off and ran. He has that ability.”
It was on display on his first TD run in the second quarter; a hole opened up on the right side and Abdur-Rahman found it and burst through it, then got to the right sideline and didn’t stop until he was in the end zone. The score with 10:21 left in the second made it 21-21 after Harris and Rodgers had scored on short passes from Abdur-Rahman to counter a 65-yard Bradford TD run and an 11-yard TD reception from Nikolas Hea in the opening quarter.
“I was proud of our O-line,” Martin said. “For the most part, they did a great job of getting a hat on a hat and being physical.”
The game possibly turned on a 24-point burst from the Cadets in second and third periods that saw the game go to a 45-28 advantage for CBC. Abdur-Rahman did what he could to keep things close, scoring on a 40-yard run in the second quarter, then pulling the Tigers to 45-38 with a four-yard burst midway through the third, followed by a 40-yard field goal from Brendan Latham.
CBC came up with the answers, however, when Bradford scored from three yards out and Ray Lingard scored from 33 yards out in the final quarter to get CBC to a 58-38 lead; Abdur-Rahman gave the Tigers one last shot when he went 82 yards for a touchdown to pull EHS to 58-45, but Edwardsville could get no closer.
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