Notre Dame football edges Chaminade in Mission League thriller

SHERMAN OAKS — Quarterback Wyatt Brown did it all offensively for Notre Dame as they defeated Chaminade in a Mission League thriller, 27-21. Brown, a West Virginia commit, ran the ball 18 times for 165 yards and was also 12 of 29 for 143 yards with three total touchdowns.

The Knights had a bit of a scare at the end of the game as Brown looked like he was going to score a 36-yard touchdown run to give Notre Dame a 13-point lead, but as Brown was going in to score he fumbled the ball out of the end zone for a touchback. Chaminade took over on offense from their own 20, trailing 27-21 with two minutes left in the game. The Knight defense was able to close out the game strongly, not allowing Chaminade to advance past their own 18-yard line in their final possession of the game, resulting in a final score of 27-21.

“It feels really good to end the regular season with a win. We had a tough stretch there on the road the last couple weeks,” Notre Dame coach Evan Yabu said. “On defense, we had a little bit of schematic switch-up on defense this week that worked for us.”

With the Notre Dame win, they snapped a six-game losing streak against Chaminade and also a three-game losing streak in the regular season heading into this game. The Knights finished the regular season (5-5, 2-3) in league play and will hope for an at-large bid into the playoffs next week. Chaminade finished the regular season also (5-5, 3-2) in league play and tied for second place in the Mission League with Bishop Amat behind the top-ranked team in the Daily News rankings, Sierra Canyon.

In the first half, Brown ran for a 50-yard touchdown in the opening drive of the game for Notre Dame. He also found Tahj Whitney on a seven-yard touchdown pass to cap off a 21-play drive, which included five Chaminade defensive penalties, for Notre Dame at the end of the half.

“All credit goes to the o-line for keeping me up,” Brown said. “I didn’t expect this game to go anyway else going down to the wire, and we just leaned on each other.”

The Chaminade offense leaned on the run game in the first half, as they have throughout the whole season, with Cameron Blackman and Marquis Jones leading the way. Blackman finished the first half with 117 rushing yards, and Jones had two first half touchdowns to make the score 14-14 heading into halftime.

After a punt on their first possession of the second half, Notre Dame was able to score on their ensuing two possessions in the half to give themselves a 27-14 lead. The two second half scores came from a 24-yard run from Brown and a 14-yard run from tailback Noel Washington.

On the Chaminade possession before Brown’s score in the third quarter, Maxwell Martin-Beckmann got an interception inside the Chaminade red zone to give Notre Dame the ball back at their own 19. The interception was one of several mistakes for Chaminade throughout the game, as they also had twelve penalties in the game.

“Hopefully they realize if you practice poorly and think it’s gonna be easy, these are the outcomes that will happen.” Chaminade head coach David Machuca said.

Chaminade was able to cut the score to 27-21 at the beginning of the fourth after Ronell Hewitt scored their lone score of the second half, from three yards out. Following the Hewitt score, Chaminade was only able to gain 15 total yards of offense for the rest of the game and also had a false start penalty that put them behind the sticks in their final possession of the game.

Notre Dame only allowed 51 passing yards in the game. Blackman finished the game with 21 carries for 207 yards for Chaminade.