Schweiker, Gannison, Krazak Roundio proudly sponsors to Friday Night Drive. I'm Mike
Krazak. If you've been injured, we are ready to take on the insurance
company and get you to the end zone. We've recovered hundreds of millions of
dollars for our clients. Visit ga Nassim dot com. What's up everyone,
and welcome back to the Friday Night Drive Podcast. I am Kyle Nighbors back
with you along with Steve Susi. It is Monday morning, September fourth,
as we record this in is Labor Day. Happy Labor Day weekend to everyone
you're listening it on Monday. If not, hope you enjoyed the Labor Day
weekend, the three day weekend, SEUs I know it's nice. That's Sunday
yesterday for us here if you're listening on Monday. We spend the entire month
of August gearing up for football season. We have a lot, you know,
it's a lot of work to do all the previews that we do,
and then when you get through those first two weekends of high school football,
they're a lot of fun. But like yesterday, like it's so nice to
just kind of kick back and her lack to get a little rechard. Yeah,
it was, and you know, for me, I'm usually you know,
looking at results and trying to figure it all out. But due to
a you know, I guess kind of a lighter schedule on Saturday and do
a game on Saturday, unlike the previous week where I did two games and
spend all day driving around the state. So I definitely had a little bit
of a more time to kind of a decompress a little bit and really kind
of get a better overview of what happened over the course of the weekend.
I mean last weekend, I felt like I was still playing catch up into
like Monday or Tuesday to get a full look at what actually happened a couple
of days before, just because of how much running around I was doing,
not complaining, love doing it, but it was a little bit different this
weekend. Yeah, the Saturday slate would really light, you know, a
few games off handed. I think of we're good Sickamore with a win over
symean Newark with a close win over schirard E. Saint Louis with a win
over at naturally ranked ting will get into that a little later, anything else
happened on Saturday. Those were the three that I can remember too. There
was a wild one I think we're gonna talk about a little bit later as
well, up at up between Homewood, Flossmore and Mary and Catholic. Yeah,
but because that was the one game that I was actually thinking about maybe
taking a track to on Saturday, and I had a little bit of remorse
choice the choices that I made this weekend because I was wrestling with a with
a couple of options on Friday and uh, and I ended up seeing a
pretty decent game in Joliet Catholic. But in retrospect, after watching one of
the other games that I was considering play out, I kind of wish I
would have been in Batavia on Friday night. But it was definitely one of
those situations where I wish I would have had a little bit more hindsight in
my selection process when I looked at back, what act should we happened in
the weekend? Yeah, it was. It was a wild weekend all around,
And we're gonna dig into that. But we've really suits like this is
my this is my favorite time of the year. Here we're now into it
September and October. Like when I was doing some editing on Saturday, had
college football on the background. NIU beat Boston College. I'm throwing that out
there to plug Eddie Carifio and his NIU football coverage. Also because NIU Grant,
I want to make sure to give him a shout out for the bone
yard win there. But sus like, this is what I really love.
The weather is still great. We get football on Friday night at high school
and even Thursday. Now we get college football on Saturday. Starting this week,
we get the NFL and an exciting Bears offense. Make sure you follow
Seawan Hamlet's coverage at SHAWL Local dot com for that. And then you know
you and I are both big baseball guys as well. We get the Pennant
races like, oh man, I love this time of year. Yeah,
it's great. I mean, it's just sometimes it feels like I'm not keeping
up with everything that I need to be keeping up with. But it's a
good problem to have. At least there are options, there are things that
you can choose from if you have to. And yeah, and sometimes it
gets a little chaotic, but all good things. To be completely honest,
with you for the most part. Yeah, and on the high School's side
will have coverage of course throughout the season for you at Friday Night Drive dot
com. You can find us on Twitter at f and Drive. You can
find myself on Twitter at Kyle Neighbors and Sus on Twitter at the Suits.
You can go to Friday Night Drive dot com. As they said, you
can also find Friday Night Drive on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok by searching
for Friday Night Drive and one more little thing to plug. Are several more
things to plug here, I guess, but make sure you join us live
on Friday night for Live with Friday Night Drive from eight to eleven PM.
Jimmy Musual and I are doing that, and it was a good thing we
were doing that, Sus, because it was a wild week too. We
knew that it was going to be. It was loaded sleigh going into it,
and it really did live up to the billing. Yeah, I mean
it was one of those things where you know, I popped in a little
bit on the live broadcast with you guys from my game, and I was
I'm trying to like pay attention to what you guys were talking about, but
also scrambling through my Twitter account to just kind of keep keep abreast of all
the crazy things that were going on, seemingly all at the same time.
Too. The fact that game times were all over the place, you would
think there was a little bit more of a smattering, but it seemed like
there was about a fifteen twenty minute window there where there were so many things
going on, and it was it was really hard to kind of decipher a
minute by minute like what was really going on because your chronological order was out
of whack, and sometimes you were getting updates that were ten minutes ago when
three things have happened since since that was posted. So yeah, it was
really really nuts. Absolutely Lee, and we're gonna start out in the you
know, north central part of the state where Morrison upset the top ranked team
in Class three A, Princeton. Princeton, the Tigers have not been handled
a lot of losses during the regular season in recent years, and it was
a freshman, a freshman taking down the Tigers. SU's freshman Josh mcderman kicked
a twenty seven yard field goal in the final seconds to give the Mustang Day
twenty twenty or twenty two, twenty one winning this one man a lot of
a lot of pressure on a freshman coming through in the clutch. Though.
Yeah, it was definitely a game where I was looking at it on paper
beforehand, you know, thinking to myself that, hey, it's probably it's
probably a situation where you know, Princeton's a heavy favorite in this game.
I know Morrison opened strong against Mendota. I wasn't really sure how good Mendota
was. This is one of those games that when you have a little bit
data, maybe you could have seen this coming a little bit more, but
I didn't really. I didn't really have any inkling that, you know,
that Morrison. I thought Morrison might be okay, but I didn't expect them
to really give Princeton much of a push. And then as we're watching the
game kind of develop like, well maybe we got something here. I mean
Morrison last year, I mean, they snuck into the back end of the
playoffs, they finished five and five, they lost in the first round.
I wouldn't have thought that they were a significant threat to Princeton, who,
obviously, by virtue of their number one ranking a lot of people highly regard.
It just wasn't something that I was really expecting to happen, to be
totally honest with you, Yeah, that was I think that's probably the biggest
upset of the weekend. There were a lot of really fun games, though,
so I feel like it's so easy to overlook something off hand. But
let's go ahead and move on. Because South Elgin was able to come out
with a seventeen fourteen win over glen Bard East, but John Getting I'm sorry,
John Getting with the touchdown pass to Ishmael George late in that game for
a seventeen fourteen win that avoided. They have a twenty four game winning streak
in the Upstate eight. Became very close to losing that against glenn BARDISTOSUS.
You know, glenn bardists has been an interesting program for me over the last
couple of years. It seems like every time I see them, I liked
something about what they're doing, what's going on with them, But they haven't
obviously been able to quite get over the hump to to take over from South
Elgin in this situation. I saw that game and I was like, well,
maybe, but you know, South Elgin has obviously dominated the Upstate eight
for the last couple of seasons. No one's really even gotten close and lead
play and finally South Elgin their program has started to get over that humble a
little bit where they would dominate the conference and typically they would go into the
playoffs. Is a really high seed because they haven't lost a game and they'd
have trouble getting a playoff win. Well, they got two of them last
year. So this is a program that certainly, you know, has established
that it's capable, but you know, Glenn Barty's trying to get to South
Elgin's level. They've been in the mix for second place in that conference behind
South Elgan for a while. But a really good sign for them. It's
one of those games where you look at it on paper and say, you
know, hard to say good loss for them, but that's a that's a
good loss for them in the grand scheme of things. It's sure they would
have liked to have come out with that win, obviously, but definitely a
good sign for Glenn Barty's maybe they are ready to make that next step.
Sticking up in the sub and of course, with our theme of just great
games, Vernon Hills came away with a twenty eight twenty one win over Lakes
Chef Right now with two touchdown catches in the game, but a big play
from him a pick six to seal that with a game tide at twenty one
with under two minutes to go. Also, he gets named with the week
for chef. Don't see that very often nowadays. I love it, Yeah,
definitely, I mean, and this is one of those games that when
you do what I do when you're projecting the playoffs, these are the kind
of games that are pivotable for programs on both sides of the field in that
situation. These are teams that kind of float around the five hundred records most
years. So looking back at it, this might be a really big win
for Vernon Hills in the grand scheme of things. Moving on to a matchup
between number three and number four in our power rank, and that is linked
Way Eas versus Batavia maybe the most anticipated game going into the weekends Shoes.
It lived up to the billing certainly, with lincoln Way East coming away with
a fourteen thirteen win. Uh. Just an incredible, incredible game with lincoln
Way East stopping a two point conversion trying the final seconds to seal that,
and you just knew when Batavias scored that they were going for two. Yeah,
you know, it's a gutsy call, but you know, I understand
why they do it in that situation, and it was it was funny listening
to coaches comments after the game about how he usually would probably just play for
the overtime and then sends something funny about that that he likes to play around
with overtime scenarios, and I'm like, that's that's one way of looking at
it. I know most most coaches had absolutely dreaded the overtime scenario, but
but he was talking about how he you know, went with his team and
chose to go for the two. Huge play on the two point conversion.
I finally saw a clip on that yesterday. I actually hadn't seen it until
then, but you know, just just surged up and had a big play
on Ryan Bow there the defense for Lincoln Way East. So but you know,
it's easy to say this after the fact, but the game kind of
played out very much like the way I thought it might. I mean,
just kind of a grind it out where neither team ever seemed to establish full
control of the game. You know, that was kind of what I thought
might happen here. And it was definitely the way that it played out,
And it's definitely one of those things where you look at a team like Batavia
who's now at the five hundred mark, and you think, yourself, I
don't feel any worse about this team than I did before, and they just
are coming off a loss. So you know, it's kind of looking at
the rankings, kind of looking at the rankings. I barely moved them down
myself. I did my class rankings the other night when I was finishing up
some stuff. I didn't move them at all, you know, So it
was just like, you know, it's one of those games that you tip
your cap to both of those programs for playing. It might have been a
necessity for both of those programs. You probably don't have a lot of teams
lining up to play them, but you rarely see a non conference game featuring,
you know, arguably two of the best five programs in the state.
But now we've seen them in consecutive weeks. So the kudos to both of
those teams for just getting that game done. Thank you. You tuned into
the Friday Night Drive Western Suburbs edition of our podcast. Josh Welgie and Jake
Barleston will get a deep dive into that game. Jake was overcovering that for
us on Friday night, and also Eddie Cariffio and jat Pendelty will be back
with you this week for their second episode of the Illinois Valley Podcast here hitting
Everything. I'm sure they'll be talking more about that Princeton game. Moving on,
sus I want to talk about Mariston brother Rice. These were two teams
that in week one. In week one did not have a lot of offense
that was playing out in a similar fashion in week two, and all of
a sudden I looked up and saw that the game was boom, you know,
way up into the twenties and Maris ends up winning this one thirty to
twenty four. What's your takeaway from that? Well, I mean, I
was, to be honest with you, frankly, really surprised with you know,
how Marist came out of the house, you know, with the offense
that they did, because, like you said, struggled the week before,
you know, six points in the loss against Glenbard West, but you know,
jumped out and took that. I believe it was a twenty four and
nothing lead over Rice before Rice finally started to get some things going on there
and brought it all the way back to tie it at twenty four in the
second half. And like you said, based on the week one production of
these two teams, I would have thought we would have had to play a
couple of overtimes to get both of these teams to twenty four points. But
Maris scored late wins thirty to twenty four. I guess showed that they have
a little bit more offensive capability and we thought they did. Yeah, definitely
looking like they found some offense there. Speaking of offense, so wild game
up close to up here in mckenry County on Friday night between John brig and
Reid Custer. It starts with Red Custer running into the good old Friday night
traffic trying to get up here to the northwest suburbs. I'm guessing on I
fifty five because it's just a complete ninth fare right now under construction. But
they end up getting up here and combining for eight second half touchdowns in this
one. Johnsburg, though, pulls it out in the end for a forty
thirty seven win. Johnsburg running back Brett sent Tarnowitz. I hope I'm getting
that one right for one hundred and eighty four yards and two touchdowns in this
one. Suits Yeah, definitely a game that between two teams that are trying,
you know, Red Custers trying to maintain what they've been doing in the
last couple of years, Johnsberg trying to a little bit of a step up.
Definitely got into a little bit of an offensive duel there. You know,
Johnsburg just kept scoring in that game, especially late. Red Custer couldn't
quite answer it. If you're not that familiar with the Recuster Recuster scored about
seven hundred points last season, was scoring all over the field. But the
fact of the matter is nearly every key player on that team graduated. So
for Recuster, hanging in a game like this a road trip against a solid
program is a good sign for them moving forward. It doesn't look like their
conferences as deep as it's been in the past, so this might actually,
even though it was a loss, this might give them a little bit of
a confidence boost heading into conference play that they can put some points on the
board against pretty good teams. So kind of a win win situation. Even
though Red Custer took the loss of this game for Johnsburg. You know,
I wouldn't have I wouldn't have scripted this. To begin the season, four
teams in the Kishwaukee River Interstate eight Blue are still undefeated. I would have
certainly assumed that that was a possibility for Richmond Burton, but Johnsburg joins the
list of teams that also includes Sandwich, who didn't even play varsity football last
year, and Plaino, another team that is off to a really strong start.
So winning games like this for Johnsburg is important apparently, because this looks
like it's going to be a pretty deep conference for them to have to maneuver
once we get into league play. I don't know if Johnsburg is going to
be able to stop anyone, but they're gonna put up a lot of points.
We'll have Joe Stevenson on later this week to telcol McHenry County. I
want to get his take on the Skyhawk. But they have qb aj Robieri
back from last year. He was really, really solid and he's off to
a good start. Three passing touchdowns and the win on Friday Night. The
thing I noticed seeing the clips from Tim Frolig that was who was out covering
that game for us, was just how big Johnsburg still is at wide receiver,
and then you add in if they're gonna be able to get this kind
of production out of Centara Witz at running back, I think that can be
a pretty dynamic offense. So interested to hear what Joe has to say about
them later in the week. But sus So, let's move on to a
couple of Saturday games before we take a quick commercial break. Homewood Flossmore played
an absolutely wild game with Mary and Catholic fifty four forty seven. What's your
takeaway from that one? You know, I looked at this on paper,
and you know, Marrying Catholic is a program that I've heard encouraging things about
that got Austin Alexander, a Kansas recruit that kind of leads the way for
them, you know, kind of a wide receiver, defensive back type of
guy. But when I saw this originally placed on the schedule, I'm like,
that may have been a little bit too much apple to be trying to
bite into. With an Ada program and Homewood Blossomore that consistently has had some
pretty good success, I didn't know if that was the best bit for Marrying
Catholics nonconference schedule, but they nearly pulled a rabbit out of their hat here
and earned a victory in this one. It was a crazy game that was
going back and forth. There were seven lead changes in the game. It
looked like Marrying Catholic had wrapped up the win late, but an onside kick
by Homewood Glossmore was recovered inside of two minutes. They went down scored a
touchdown in the last minute of the game to win that game four to forty
seven. Just an absolutely wild one that seemed to be It was played in
a pinball machine. There were things that were just zinging around and I was
getting it seemed felt like I was getting scoring updates on that one about every
thirty seconds. It was quite the entertaining game. But it's another one of
those games where you look at it and say the losing team might have actually
benefited a little bit more out of that. I mean, they Mary Catholic
isn't the Red division of the CCOL, and despite a good start for most
of the teams in that league, it certainly looks like maybe this is a
division of the Catholic League that Mary Katholic might be able to win. So
at one and one right now, if they can if they can actually do
that, then that really all they have to do is find one other win
inside of their schedule if they can run the table in the red. So
it would have been great for them to win that game and going to the
Catholic and schedule two and oh, but a good sign as to how far
that program has come recently. All right, one more game, Susan.
It involves East Saint Louis with a trip out to Baltimore to play nationally league
ranked Saint Francis Academy. East Saint Louis took that loss in week one down
at Illinois State University to Mount Carmel was in danger here a fall and oh
and two. Of course, I don't think that really matters to the long
run for this East Saint Louis team, But you know what, it didn't
matter either way because Saint Louis the Flyers come out o here with a with
a win against Saint Francis Academy. SU's hot. Were you surprised, Well,
Saint Francis is obviously a really good program. I actually watched them,
they were broadcast at ESPN the previous week. They lost the game that they
were playing, and actually entered that game and now they're owing three. But
for them to be oh and three with the equality of opponents that they've played
so far, it's kind of understanding because I believe they've now played two top
ten teams in the ES in the national rankings and now lost to eat St.
Louis, So they've played some really good teams. They look incredible.
I mean they've really they really looked like they've got talent all over the field.
It was a game heading into it that I thought E. Saint Louis
was going to be in real trouble. And even though I really think they're
a very talented team, and you mentioned before that it didn't matter and maybe
it doesn't matter that much if they lost that game, but considering that as
of this moment, East Saint Louis does not have a Week nine game scheduled,
it mattered a little bit more, to be completely honest with you,
because they don't have a Week nine game. They've only got eight games scheduled,
so I mean, just to get a playoff berth, they can only
lose three. So if this would have dropped them to oh and two,
they would have had really only one more loss that they were allowed before,
you know, getting into a Southwestern Conference schedule. Granted they've dominated the Southwestern
Conference, but Edwardsville O'Fallon on a good day. I mean, we saw
O'Fallon at the prize them. Was it two seasons? They go say,
yeah, yeah, so, I mean you don't want to lock that in.
I mean, and when? And they still have one more nationally ranked
team on their their schedule when they travel to Texas next week. They're going
to Humble. I'm not going to say the name of school because I'm gonna
butcher it. I can't pronounce it. But they're they're a top ten team
in Texas and their rank I believe in the top forty nationally. So and
they just beat another top ten team in Texas this week, so that's no
slouch either. So really, it turns out in the grand scheme things to
be a pretty darn important win for East Saint Louis, I think, in
the grand and the grand scheme of it all, but a really really impressive
when in doing so, late touchdown pass from Pop's battle to Rico Bond provided
the difference in that one. It was it was basically a seven seven game
for most of the contest before East Saint Louis got the decisive score, winning
thirteen to seven. But speed and athleticism all over the field. I watched
about a half of it on a on a sketchy screw stream that I found
of the contest. I think someone was shooting it from their phone from the
stands. But what I did see was a was a pretty pretty impressive display
of skills on sides of the ball. All right, we'll stick with us.
Well, we have to take a quick commercial break, but we have
plenty more to talk about from week two. Schweiker Ganison Krazak Rundio Proudley sponsors
to Friday Night Drive. I'm Mike Krazak. If you've been injured, we
are ready to take on the insurance company and get you to the end zone.
We've recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for our clients. Visit GA nassi
n dot com. Welcome back into the Friday Night Drive Podcast. I am
Kyle Nabors along with Steve Susie here wrapping up week two, and thank you
once again to s G k R for sponsoring the Friday Night Drive podcast.
Sus I had talked about chet rap now earlier for a team or for the
best name of the week. He also I think should be in the running
for the Team of the Week MVP. Make sure you go to Friday Night
Drive dot com right now that voting is open until Monday evening. He is
certainly in that conversation. Another name is Sean Winton, quarterback out of York
through four touchdowns at a forty two thirteen win over Nazareth, including three touchdowns
and a quarter of which York scored twenty eight points us. Both of us
liked the Dukes coming into this season. I'm feeling really good about them after
this one. Yeah, I mean this was a game that obviously I felt
like York was the favorite going into the game, don't get me wrong,
but I did not expect them to take Nazareth the task in the way that
they did. Even after seeing some of the struggles that Nazareth had in Week
one, I thought maybe they'd be able to bounce back a little bit here
and do a few more things, especially offensively. Wasn't happening. I mean,
I think we have to pretty much, not that we were arguing about
it too much, but accept the ascension of York to not only probably being
the best team in their conference, but being one of the better programs in
the state. Any alarm bells going off yet for Nazareth. I mean,
you've seen them live, so you like, wouldn't have a pretty decent feel
on it at this point. Well, I mean, nobody wants to be
O and two. I mean, I guess. But one thing that you
can say for Nazareth in this situation is it's not like they haven't gone through
some of these things before. I mean, they were they were two and
four last year before catching the groove that allow them to win their next eight
games and win the state championship. But I mean you have to take note
of the whole that they've now dug for themselves. I mean, and on
top of that, it's it's a schedule that is unforgiving. There's gonna be
games on here where you look at it and you say they're an underdog in
that game. I mean, I don't think. I mean, you can't
look at what's happened so far and not you know, not real in the
fact that they've still got to deal with brother Rice and Fenwick and an icy
Catholic before this season's over. And you know, and all of them,
and I didn't even mention some of the other teams that are on that schedule.
Yeah, all of them are capable handing them a loss. Yes,
this is here's here's the remaining schedule. It's Montini. I see Catholic,
Saint Ignatius, Fenwick, Brother Rice marrying Catholic, and Saint Francis. There's
not particularly if marrying Catholic is able to score in the fashion that they date
as they did it. We discussed earlier. There's not a guaranteed win left
on the schedule for the Roadrunners. And I'm gonna go ahead and say it
right now. I don't think now that they's gonna make the playoffs. Like
no, I can see that argument. I mean, it's definitely one of
those situations where I mean, it's too early to really look at this and
count on it. But well, I'm not. I'm not counting on it.
I mean strength, but I'm just getting to a different points. Strength
of schedule for them is number seven in the state right now of four hundred
ninety nine programs. And you know that's that's what we're talking about here.
I mean, yeah, that I wanted to I wanted to finish up there
with saying that if as long as they get to four wins, if they
if we do have four win teams in the field, they have to be,
if not at the top, very close to the top, because every
single team on this schedule is going to be I mean, is it is
every team on this schedule Little gonna make the playoffs? I think so.
Well, it becomes tricky to maneuver because just as you're saying that, you
know, you think Nazareth might have some losses, several of the other teams
on here are going to have losses by design. I mean, yeah,
the Catholic every week, now twelve Catholic League teams are going to pick up
a loss. It's not like it's not like the non conference season where they
were going, you know, every week, it seemed like they were,
you know, collectively the whole league was losing five or six games. Now
now that look total is going to double. Some of these teams that you're
looking at and going, man, these are really good teams. They're going
to finish six and three or five and four just because they have to.
I mean, someone has to accumulate these losses. So yeah, yeah,
yeah, Like I'm looking at Monty started. Montini finished three and six last
year, is off to a two and oh start, like looking at their
schedule, like I think they can get to five, Like I think Saint
Ignatius at one on one can still get to five. I see Catholic off
to a two and o starter. I know, like they have to get
they have a really tough schedule coming up, but like it's it's gonna be
uh, it's gonna be really tough for nowther to get to buy wins.
They can do it, of course, and if they get into the fun
I can honestly see all nine teams on their schedule making the playoffs. But
weirdly enough, I could also see five of them making the playoffs because of
the strength of the Catholic League. That's that's that's the situation. Like sometimes
you look at a team schedule, you say a playoff team, playoff team,
playoff team, and you can say that with confidence. But in the
Catholic League, these losses got to go somewhere. And I think some of
these teams on the schedule, unfortunately for them, while they're off to good
starts, I don't know if they're gonna finish on the the note that would
indicate that their playoff teams. So it's tricky to kind of read that,
but you're right on that. If Nasareth does only get to four wins,
their point situation is going to be very strong because I can easily see a
scenario where there are two non conference games give them eighteen playoff points, which
means they're both undefeated. I mean, I can completely see that happening.
So that gives you a tremendous base. And even if you get you know,
average playoff point totals from everyone in here, and I think that's potential.
I mean, right there, you're looking at fifty plus points and that
should be good enough to get you in. The Catholic League is just sick
man, Like, I'm looking down at Benwick now two an old start,
and they're playing Providence this week, and you're like, all right, well,
if they lose a Providence two and one, it's not a big deal.
But then I start looking down. I'm like, all right, after
that, the only win I feel confident about is DePaul because then they have
Nils, Notre Dame, Naz Mount Carmel, and I see Catholic and again,
like Fenwick could end up winning six or seven of these in total,
and I wouldn't be surprised. They could end up still lying in a way
to end up going like three and six or four and five, and I
wouldn't be shocked. Yeah, And I mean you could do that with a
lot of these teams. Like the one that got me was when I saw
that Saint Ignatious lost that Fenwick. My initial thought was up because if you
look at Saint Ignatious the schedule after this week where they dropped at one and
one with that lost to Fenwick, they go Brother Rice Maris Nazareth and I
think an underrated Notre Dame team all in a row four games in a row
right there, and then they finished the season with Joliet Catholic. So think
about that for a minute. They're in Nager. I mean, that's a
treacherous stretch there in the middle of the season and then have to finish with
Joliet Catholic with possibly your playoff lives on the line. All right, Well,
let's go out to the Fox Valley Conference where Chris da Lake South took
a fourteen old lead on Prairie Ridge in the in the first half of that
game suits and I went, man, what is wrong with you know,
the pr offense here? You know, six points last week against Jacobs,
who win that game six zero. But they end up getting it together,
getting up seventeen fourteen and a half. They end up scoring thirty eight on
a half unanswered to win that game thirty eight fourteen. I guess the lesson
there is don't count out the Wolves too soon, right, Yeah. I
mean it's one of those things when I when I looked at that early result,
I was taken aback a little bit. But you know, over time,
I've learned, don't count Prairie Ridge out of anything until we're absolutely done.
Like that's just the reality of the situation I've come to. If I
see a score where they're down in the first half or something of that nature,
you know, I figure there's going to be a bounce back. I
don't know coach Shrimp as well as you do, but in my experience with
him, I would expect that it's not too fun to not be playing up
to your potential on his sideline. So it was interesting to see how quickly
they snapped back into form and got things done. But you know, I
year and year out. I have a hard time being talked out of the
fact that Prairie Ridge isn't going to be one of the leaders in this conference
from a year to year basis, And here we go again. It appears.
Yeah, it's it's gonna be wild to see how this conference plays out
because you look over and you have Carry Grove and Crysta Lake Central. Also
on Friday evening with Carry Grove pulling out of seventeen fourteen win and that one
Crystal Lake Central falls to O and two. But you're talking about two losses
where they were right there at the very end of the game. It gets
Huntley and Carry Grove. This Carry Grove defense looks legit. As soon as
we've talked before how young the Trojans. This Trojans team was last year,
coming off the twenty only one state championship. You got some guys and Andrew
Prio, Peyton Sieberg and Logan Abrams that are really starting to get into that
triple option offense. Logan Abrams Abrams, there's only a sophomore and he's just
he's already he's gonna be just running kids over for several years. In the
FBC suits it's it's really difficult right now to discern this could be another case
where we end up with co champions like we did last year with four teams
at the top. I'm sorry, three teams at the top in Prairie Ridge,
Crystal Lake South. I'm Prairie Ridge Hutley and Prairie Ridge Hutley go my
Free Ending, Susy Growth Kry No Carry Grow Bits the playoffs last year.
Yeah, Jacobs, Jacobs. See, that's what I'm saying. That's how
competitive this conference is. It Literally, I mean, it could be Crystal
Lake South or christ Lake Central at the end of the year. In this
conversation, it's been so damn closed, So it's I don't know if I
have much more information after two weeks than I feel like I had, you
know, before the season. The big dog I guess right now is Hotly
and followed by Prairie Ridge and Carry Grove. But it's really close. I
think. Well, the dangerous thing about this in a closed conference format is
if it stacks the way it's supposed to stack, which is one you know,
with everyone knowing you know, zero loss is one lost, two loss,
three loss, four loss, you get five playoff teams, But you
can have a conference like this, one might end up being where the losses
get more scattered, and there is a mathematical way where you could potentially get
six teams in the playoffs by doing that, But there's also a mathematical scenario
that could play out where you can only get three. I mean, there's
it can happen. So that's one of the tricky things about having a deep
closed conference. If everyone starts to take losses here and there, I mean,
we might get into a situation where we get to Week nine and there
might be three games out there that are win and get in situations where for
both teams, I mean, it could happen. It's I mean, it's
not likely to happen. But this is a dangerous situation. When when I'm
doing my playoff projection, closed conferences are usually the easiest ones to decipher.
The Fox Valley is terrible because I can't There's gonna be one team that I'm
going to leave out every time that I do it that I think as a
playoff caliber team, maybe two that because I just do I simply rank them
in order, and I stick by the ranks, so I don't play around
with well, these three teams, they'll all win one game when they play
each other. I don't do that, So it may play out that way,
But for projections purposes, there's gonna be a team that I'm going to
leave out that I think as a playoff caliber team because I know that the
losses have to end up somewhere. So it's I still, like you said,
I don't know how much more we know now than we knew before the
season started about how this conference really stacks up. We got two more games
we want to hit on before we get out of here today, sus.
The first is Belleville Altough really taking it to Decatur St. Teresa on Friday
night forty six to thirteen. Listen, we knew that Decatur St. Teresa
a lot of turnover from that state championship last team, including a coaching change.
That being said, I did not see this margin of this margin coming
to fruition this weekend. I didn't either, But I mean there are a
couple of things here that come into play. We knew going in that Saint
Teresa was probably going to experience a little bit of a falloff from that state
championship team. The underlying thing that some people don't realize is that Decatur Saint
Teresa was essentially kicked out of their conference after last year, which made their
schedule a bit of a nightmare to try to put together. They had to
travel over to Indiana to play one of the state's better small school programs.
They lost that game by two touchdowns. They they had to play Bellville Altof,
a good, solid program that I had started to hear buzz about earlier
this summer. I was talking with some of my friends that are down from
that area at a seven on seven tournament and and I relayed the information to
them that Belville Altof was probably going to be a one A playoff team.
And one of the guys I was talking to was not facing me director directly,
but when he heard me say that, he turned around and had this
look of terror on his face, like they're a one A team. I
mean, this is a legitimately good Belleville ALTALF team that I think is in
the mix to be at I su to be completely honest with that's how good
I think they are. And then you look at the rest of the DECAYR.
Saint Teresa's schedule. They've got Tolono Unity on there. They've got Leno
Winslow on there in week five, They've finished with Breeze Modern Day in week
eight, and then you know a four a school that's been pretty solid in
Highland to close out their schedule. So just do some counting there. They're
already at OZ and two. They've got two legitimate small school powerhouses in the
middle of their schedule and finished with Breeze Modern Day and Highland. They also
go to Missouri and play Quincy Notre Dame in week seven, So it's it's
just an absolutely stacked schedule for a two way program that honestly doesn't quite have
the talent level that they had in the past. I would, to be
honestly, looking at their schedule, I think they're going to be hard pressed
to get to to four wins to even get themselves into conversation. If we
take at large teams at four wins five months, I think is a really
hard mountain for them to climb in the schedule. All right, Sue's final
game, You're ready to get on the Barrington bandwagon full suits. Because Nick
Piepert threw five touchdowns in this one fourteen win for the Broncos over Prospect.
I will put up the little asterisk that Prospect did have some turnover after this
year. I mean that was But with that being said, Barrington sus now
back to back big wins. Yeah, I mean, I gotta be honest.
I mean I considered, you know, forty forty five teams when I
was spitting together my preseason rankings, and and Marrington wasn't on the list.
And it looks like that was a major screw up on my part. Barrington's
really brought it out of the box here. Just it's really done a nice
job. I've always I've been an enthusiastic supporter Prospect, and what was going
on with them. I certainly thought they had an opportunity to win this game
against Barrington because I still wasn't one hundred percent on board. Consider me a
one hundred percent on board. Now, this is a team that still has
more arduous games to get through on their schedule. It's it's incredible the schedule
Barrington has put together. But they are too and oh now, I mean
so that makes it a lot easier to breathe. Uh, you know,
they still have you know, a good Glen bricks out team. Even though
they're O and two out of the box in conference. They've got to deal
with Palatine later in the year. But all of a sudden, this schedule
looks like being at the beginning of your look like an overbearing beast. Too
pretty manageable now for Barrington. So a tremendous start for them, and all
props to them one more time before we get out of here, and SEUs
gives us his final thought from week two. Make sure you go to Friday
Night Drive dot com. This week will have updated projection playoff projection from the
from the SEUs from Suits going up on Wednday will have power ranking. We
have what we learned in week two as well. We'll get you set for
week three. Of course, tune in on Friday night to listen to Jimmy
Usual I take you through everything happening from eight to eleven pm live on YouTube
in the Friday Night Drive Facebook page. You can also go to Friday Night
Drive dot com or any of the show local websites. Make sure you follow
Friday Night Drive on Twitter at fn drive and find us on Facebook, Instagram
and TikTok SEUs. What do you take away from week two? Man well,
I mean, they are a little over one hundred and fifty teams in
the state right now that are two and oh. That's a normal number for
this stage of the season. But what's not normal about it is there's quite
a few teams on there that you wouldn't expect to be on that list.
And that's kind of one of my favorite things about this early portion of the
season, kind of seeing some of those surprise teams starting to materialize that you've
got to take a better look at because you're like, hey, what's going
on with these guys. I'm not used to seeing them with a two and
old records, So it's gonna be fun to see, you know, how
much more that list gets paired down in week three, some interesting matchups for
some of those teams, and you know, we'll get into more of that
later in the week. But really, it's been so interesting to see how
these first two weeks of schedule played out for a lot of these programs,
because when you looked at it before the year, you knew this was gonna
be crazy. I expected it to be crazy. It was even crazier than
I thought it was going to be. Just so many key matchups that we
usually don't see until later in the season to kind of give us a better
impression of who the best teams are likely to be. I appreciate that,
but now I got to catch my breath and get ready for week three.
Stay right here for Ogi and Jake Barleston, who will bring you the Western
Suburb podcast, and Eddie Carrifio and JT. Penalty who will bring you the
Illinois Violey podcasts. Then Susie will be back later this week to preview Week
three. But for now we're going to go ahead and sign off. Everyone.
Have a good week. We'll talk to you later this week. Schweiker
Gannison Krazak Rundio proudly sponsors to Friday Night Drive. I'm Mike Krazak. If
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