STARKVILLE — On the field, the St. Aloysius Flashes glumly accepted their trophy and trudged toward the locker room. There, players slowly unwrapped the tape, stripped off their pads and digested the last 2 ½ hours. Offensive lineman Ben Brown sat in his locker, still fully dressed, seemingly not wanting the season to end.

The whole postgame scene was a mix of pride and sadness for the Flashes. The joy of a 13-win season and a state championship game berth was tempered with the horror show it became.

Cathedral quarterback Wyatt Booth rushed for 108 yards and four touchdowns, and also threw a touchdown pass, as the Green Wave routed St. Al 49-14 in the MHSAA Class 1A championship game Friday at Mississippi State’s Davis Wade Stadium.

Dee Fleming ran for 128 yards and a touchdown on only 10 carries as Cathedral racked up 288 rushing yards. St. Al, which was averaging 41 points per game, finished with only 214 total yards and a season-low point total.

“It’s bad. It’s bad. Because we’ve gone from the bottom to the top. We got kicked off the mountaintop, and it’s just not a good feeling,” St. Al senior center Bash Brown said.

The lopsided loss brought St. Al’s best season in 3 ½ decades to a screeching halt.

The Flashes won 13 games in a row — the total set a single-season school record for victories — and a region title for the first time since 1993. They reached the state championship game for the first time since 1981. They had no answer for Cathedral, though.

The Green Wave beat St. Al 42-31 in the season opener in August, then bookended that win with a much more decisive one on Friday. The two losses to Cathedral were the only ones St. Al suffered all season.

Cathedral won its first football state championship in its first title game appearance since 1993, and also gained the ultimate bragging rights over its archrival. The Green Wave beat St. Al for the sixth straight time and evened the all-time series at 26 games apiece.

“It feels great. There’s no question about who’s the better team. Especially with us beating St. Al, our big rivals, it felt amazing,” Booth said. “The fact that it was a rival game was almost bigger than the fact it was a state championship game. We were that focused on them. I wouldn’t have wanted to play anybody else.”

St. Al’s players felt the same way in the days leading up to the game, but it quickly became apparent that this might have been the worst possible matchup for them.

Jardarius Anderson returned the opening kickoff 74 yards to the St. Al 15-yard line and Fleming punched in a 1-yard touchdown run two plays later. St. Al answered with a 7-yard touchdown pass from Connor Smith to Lane Hynum to tie the score, but Cathedral soon got the ball rolling on a blowout.

On the next play from scrimmage, Fleming took a handoff off the left side and seemed bottled up in the backfield. He deftly avoided a tackle, reversed direction, and sprinted 61 yards up the middle of the field. Smith ran Fleming down inside the 10, jumping on his back and clutching at his facemask to prevent a touchdown, but it was all for naught. Booth plowed in for a 1-yard run two plays later, and Cathedral never trailed again.

The Green Wave scored on three consecutive possessions in the second quarter to take a 35-7 lead at halftime.

“We’ve been punched in the mouth, but that was early in the season. It’s been a while since someone’s really came and taken it to us like that. I feel like they did that because they were just better prepared,” Bash Brown said.

St. Al, meanwhile, never got going at all. After scoring on its first possession, the offense didn’t get back into the red zone until its final drive of the game. Smith scored on a 6-yard run with 4:45 to go for the Flashes’ second touchdown.

Smith and DeMichael Harris, who combined for 3,350 yards and 41 touchdowns on the ground in St. Al’s first 14 games, were held to a total of 111 on Friday. Smith carried the ball 22 times for 77 yards, and Harris — who set single-season school records for rushing yardage and touchdowns — was held to 40 yards on 15 carries.

St. Al converted seven times on third down, but was put into that situation a whopping 17 times, meaning it was often facing difficult third-and-long situations.

“We weren’t able to go with our M.O., which was to run the ball. We couldn’t do it. If we can’t do that, it’s hard,” Bash Brown said. “Changing up the schedule, too, they may have been better prepared for it. They definitely handled it better, the change in atmosphere, the change in time and what they’re doing before the game. That definitely affected us. They set the tone.”