Rain and turnovers: Football Pats miss opportunities in defeat to Classical

By Dom Nicastro

The good news? The Revere High School football team’s defense has been tremendous in the last two games, allowing just 14 points.

The bad news? Those 14 points were 14 more than the Patriots could muster in a 14-0 loss to Lynn Classical on Saturday at Fraser Field in Lynn. The loss came after a 36-0 drubbing of Somerville – Revere’s first and only win of the season thus far – and dropped the Patriots to 1-6.

The team looks to finish the eight-game regular season at home against Malden on Friday night at 6 p.m. After that, there will be two games for Revere – opponent to be determined – in the consolation round for teams that don’t make the playoffs. Revere won’t make the postseason because teams need to win at least three games in the eight-game regular season.

Revere was inches away from taking a lead in the second quarter against the Rams but fumbled away the opportunity. Another promising drive also ended in a turnover, and the Patriots gave up the ball on a punt deep in their own end, leading to Classical’s first score. It was that kind of day for Revere in Lynn. It was raining most of the day, and in terms of lost opportunities in this one, it poured for Revere. That fumble near the end zone on the drive with the score 0-0 killed an 11-play, 79-yard journey in the second quarter.

“It was just a tough loss,” Revere coach Lou Cicatelli said. “Again, I thought we played well enough to definitely win. Just, again, too many bad mistakes. It was 0-0 at the half, and we had a chance and got all the way down to the 1-yard line but we fumbled. That was a killer, you know, and I think from that point on it was back and forth. No one could really do much. Both defenses did well. I’m really proud of my defense the last two weeks. We’ve been awesome. And we even moved the ball pretty well on offense.”

Abass Atoui and Anthony Pham were all over the field with tackles. Pham had a couple of sacks. Nicholas Aguirre at defensive end played well, and Ahmed Bellemsiel had a great game each way.

“The defense has been playing out of their minds the last two weeks,” Cicatelli said. “We got some guys back thank God. So we’ll see if we can finally get something going. We play Malden at home, first home game in a long time, and we’ll see where it goes.”

Walter Rodriguez had to sit because of a concussion but will be back this coming week.

Lynn Classical put up 40 points and 400 yards-plus passing the week before in a loss to Salem. So there’s definitely something to be said for the Patriots’ effort this week, even if the weather did slow down the Rams considerably. Quarterback Brian Vaughan Jr. had a touchdown run from 11 yards out, and RJ Faessler had the other TD run from 31 yards away. Classical improved to 5-2 on the win.

“The bottom line is the team that makes the least number of mistakes wins, and we made the mistakes, and it came back to bite us,” Cicatelli said.

Malden is 2-5 overall and coming off a 56-0 loss to Everett. Their two wins are Somerville (27-12) and Lynn English (21-14).

“They’re very good. I think they’re really good,” Cicatelli said. “They’re fast. They move…quickly and have some athletes. They’re similar to us, I think. I think it’s going to be a good football game.”