high schools

When the football families from Cretin-Derham Hall are planning their weekend getaways, it's a rock-solid guarantee that Lakeville is not on anybody's list. The Raiders rather would forget about the southern suburb, which has become a major cause of autumn nightmares at Cretin-Derham Hall.

One year and one week ago, Lakeville South pulled the surprise of the season by knocking an unbeaten Cretin-Derham Hall team out of the section playoffs. Thursday night at Griffin Stadium in St. Paul, Lakeville North very nearly did the same thing to the Raiders in the quarterfinals of the Class 5A tournament.

The second-ranked Raiders led 26-3 late in the first half. From that point on, it was nothing but bad mojo for Cretin. The final score was 26-18, and Lakeville North still was flinging long-range passes as the clock struck zeroes.

"That was shades of Lakeville all over again," said a very relieved Raiders coach Mike Scanlan. "They were really good."

No kidding. Second-ranked Cretin-Derham Hall is now 12-0 and facing some questions about its defense. Lakeville North, the fifth-place team in the Lake Conference, finished 8-4.

And how exactly did North come so close?

"Our kids believed," Panthers coach Mike Zweber said. "We think we've got pretty good football players."

No kidding again. Paul Bernier, a 5-9, 190-pound senior running back, pounded the ball into the Raiders all night while junior quarterback Mike Hartwell turned Cretin's pass defense inside out.

On offense, the Raiders are as explosive as a school funding referendum. Their defense has come under scrutiny lately, but it was strong enough to hold firm with the game on the line. A 2-yard scoring run by Bernier, and two-point conversion pass from Hartwell to Nick Johnson, made it 26-18 on the final play of the third quarter.

North had some big plays in the final 12 minutes, including a fake punt that kept the chains moving and a 15-yard scramble by Hartwell on fourth-and-5. But the Panthers could not score.

"As much as our defense gets beat up, they won the game for us," Scanlan said. "We knew the defense was going to have to carry us sooner or later, and they did."

Scanlan said his team didn't get the ball into Michael Floyd's hands enough. He was correct. The Notre Dame recruit caught four passes for 44 yards, including a 15-yard TD pass from John Nance. (FYI: positions played by Floyd in this game -- wide receiver, cornerback, punt returner, running back and quarterback.)

Bernier scored twice for North and Kyle Roach kicked a 22-yard field goal. Shady Salamon (1 yard) and Marcus Binns (73) had touchdown runs for the Raiders and Jacob Esch fell on a fumble to score another touchdown.

Cretin-Derham Hall had not really been tested until last week, when it beat Tartan 53-32 in the Section 4 title game. The score that night was a very un-Raider-like 21-19 after the first quarter -- no team had scored more than 17 against them in an entire game this year -- and Tartan's Jordan Johnson finished with 15 rushes for 230 yards.

"That was the worst showing we've had, and that kid [Johnson] was good, he surprised us," Scanlan said before Thursday's game. "But that got the fellas' attention."

After the game, Scanlan was just happy that the season had not ended at the hands of another team from you know where.

"I kept thinking, 'We're going to give it away,'" he said.

Almost. Almost.