Football: Behind Miller and Iuliano, Rye scores 28 first-half points in win over Nanuet
RYE — The most intriguing stat from Thursday night's Rye-Nanuet football game might be the second-half points put on the board.
That would be a total of two.
They belonged to Nanuet and resulted from a bad snap by Rye off an intended punt that Rye landed on in its own end zone for a safety.
But Thursday's game was anything but a low-scoring, defensive battle.
Fans were treated to TD after TD in the first two quarters — one coming after the snap was taken with only one second left in the half.
And those TDs — all four of them — belonged to Rye.
The Garnets, who dominated on both sides of the ball from the game's opening minutes, raised their season record to 2-1 with a 28-2 win.
There was neither a fumble nor interception as Rye lit up the scoreboard in the first half, mixing runs with passes in what seemed like a master class in how to dissect a defense.
Credit senior QB A.J. Miller, who exhibited a first-rate arm, superior field vision and poise in finding multiple receivers, two for touchdowns.
And credit Rye's offensive line, which not only gave Miller time to sit in the pocket but also created quite a few of what seemed like canyon-size holes for Garnet backs like Chris Iuliano, Ty Ramachandran and Archer Fenton to run through.
And those backs also took on the aura of pack mules, sometimes dragging two, three and even four Golden Knight tacklers for multiple yards.
That, in fact, occurred right from the get-go.
Starting their first drive on the Nanuet 48 following a punt, Rye scored on just three plays. The last two found Iuliano going 20 yards — the last several dragging and carrying a few Knights on his back — to the Nanuet 5, then going in from there following the next snap.
Less than a minute into the second quarter, Iuliano went in from three yards out to cap a 12-play, 80-yard drive. And with Ian Khemlani's second of four PATs, the rout was on.
What it means
The win was a big one for Rye, which dropped its opening game of the season to huge rival Harrison by a touchdown before romping over Lakeland.
Nanuet, now 1-1, was ninth in the latest Journal News rankings and Rye was unranked.
Next Friday, Rye, which moved down from Section 1 Class A to B this year due to enrollment numbers, will take on defending Class B champion Pleasantville, which was ranked eighth before its 23-13 win over Pearl River on Thursday.
Miller said his squad "has all the respect for" Pleasantville but wants to show it Class B now belongs to Rye.
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Key plays
And it seems certain Pleasantville will be studying tape from the Garnets' game vs. Nanuet.
Clearly, as Nanuet coach Phil Carbone noted, his squad was guilty of some blown coverages.
And Miller had no problem spotting and hitting his receivers — both wide open and covered.
He found one of his favorite targets, Charlie Stevens, open for 50 yards. A six-yard pass to Jake Kessner and a 14-yard pass to Jack Acciavatti (who had multiple big grabs, preceded Miller's 13-yard TD pass to Stevens with 5:53 left in the first half.
If Nanuet had any hope of a comeback it probably ended with the halftime horn.
Rye got the ball back at its own 12-yard line after a missed Nanuet field goal with little more than a minute left in the half.
Three completions brought the ball to midfield with just 9.3 seconds left.
Miller then hit Stevens with a bomb to the Nanuet 3. A Miller spike and offensive penalty took the ball back to the 8 with that one second left.
And the ball was in the air and headed into Tucker Hess's hands in the right corner of the end zone as the horn sounded.
Rye's defense was also smothering. Nanuet QB Max Valese was 5-for-16 for 52 yards. He was also the Golden Knights' leading ground-gainer, running five times for 40 yards.
The defensive highlight for Nanuet came in the fourth quarter when Vincent Duffy intercepted a pass around his own 2-yard line and ran it back about 40 yards.
They said it
"Rye is Rye," Carbone replied when asked about the Garnets' domination.
"We can't make the amount of mistakes we made and expect to compete with a team like Rye," he said, adding, "It seemed like every time we made a mistake, they capitalized."
"We are a very good physical team," Miller said.
"It starts up front," he said, crediting the play of the offensive line. "They're big, strong kids and love to hit. The whole team morale is we love to hit."
Iuliano also praised the Garnet O line and said in some instances, he was gaining yards in traffic simply by being pushed forward by his linemen.
"They were doing a lot of the work," Iuliano said.
To beat Pleasantville next week, Rye will have to do two things, Iuliano said.
One is stop running back Daniel Picart, who has been a scoring machine for the Panthers.
The second, he said, is to "Keep doing what we're doing and keep the train rolling."
What's next
Both Rye's game at Pleasantville and Nanuet's next game, hosting Putnam Valley, will be at 6 p.m. next Friday.
Nancy Haggerty covers cross-country, track & field, field hockey, skiing, ice hockey, basketball, girls lacrosse and other sporting events for The Journal News/lohud. Follow her on Twitter at @HaggertyNancy.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Football: Total domination as Iuliano, Miller lead Rye over Nanuet 28-2
