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up everyone, Welcome back to the Friday Night Drive podcast. I am Kyle
Neighbors and we have made it to the bittersweet final weekend of the high school
football season. State championships are just a little more, well, no,
not a little more. It is now forty eight hours less than forty eight
hours away. Here it is Wednesday morning, November twenty second. Suits,
how you do it? That's too bad? Getting ready for you know what?
I expect to be a pretty exciting state finals weekend. Yeah, it
is looking like a good slate of games down in Normal will be there for
the first time in a long time, Illinois State University hosting the state championship
game after being at Champagne and Northern Illinois for the last decade plus and Champagne
for a long time before that. Suits, What are you expecting this weekend
in normal in terms of atmosphere, just how things they're gonna go. You
know, it will be interesting to find all those answers out. You know,
got kind of a little bit of a sneak preview back in Week one
when I went to see Et Saint Louis and Mount Carmel play. Obviously,
you know, expecting bigger crowds, but there was a pretty good crowd in
that Week one matchup between those two powerhouses, and you know, it felt
cozy. It felt like if the you know, the stands were filled on
both sides, you could get a lot of a noise and energy in that
place. And I'm interested to see if that comes to fruition. We've talked
about this a lot before, you know, for you know all that you
know that Champagne brought to the table. One thing that they could never get
past was the fact that you really couldn't create an environment where it felt like,
you know, there are lots of fans in the place, and it
there wasn't a lot of electricity you know that you would hope to have for
a state final. You know, I love the facility, but it's just
for this particular event. I think we might have found the sweet spot here.
It's interesting to see if we have Zach checking in with us this morning
live. He says, Hey, Stephen Kyle, I just wanted to wish
you guys a happy Thanksgiving, save travels, and a wonderful week and of
football ahead of us. Thank you for all your hard work this year.
Thanks Zach. Everyone. If you're watching live with us this morning on Facebook
or YouTube, please do jump into the comments. We'd love to hear from
you. Answer your questions here. Of course, follow us on Twitter or
at Kyle Neighbors at the SEUs. You can find us of our Friday Night
Drive account at ben Drive. Also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and
TikTok as well. Give this video a thumbs up. Subscribe to our YouTube
channel. We're live with you guys throughout this season now SEUs, we got
Michael Dwojack going to be joining us here who covers the Catholic League and the
suburban Catholic Confidence for us in a little bit. But we're gonna start and
work our way up from one A all the way up to Class A A
H and then that one Class one A title game. Here we get a
rematch between Lena Winslow and Camp Points Central. What are your first thoughts when
we got this matchup again. You know, when we got the master up
again, you immediately kind of went back to last year's game and thought about
what the differences were between the two teams and how that might a just heading
into this game. You know, I just and I really don't have a
lot of statistical justification for this, but my gut feelings is that we're gonna
get a different game this time. I just think that Camp Point Central will
we'll give it a little bit better of a swing. It never seemed it
able to find their putting in that last year's game if you went back and
looked at it, and I did earlier this week, weren't able to sustain
a drive of basically longer than three minutes of game time the fourth quarter.
And you know that's not everything, but against Lena, you have to be
able to keep football for a little while. I mean, you got to
keep it away from home a little bit, sustain some drives and kind of,
you know, maybe try to get them out of what they're most comfortable
doing. And Camp was never able to do that last year. But for
some reason, I think this team has a little bit different juice to it.
That is, Camp Point Central has been extremely impressive getting out of the
box in the postseason. Has jumped out to substantial leagues in pretty much every
one of their games. And I'm talking about like a first half lead.
I'm talking about like the first five minutes. So I think if they could
establish themselves early on in the game, get themselves comfortable, I think we
might have a better game on our hands here. Darn check it in this
Morning says the only way you can beat in a winslow is with the pass
and a good defense to stop the run. Rocker Luther and expose them in
their playoff game, and Chicago Hope exposed them even more. I was looking
through Camp Point Central statistics. A really run heavy team got two running backs
at about or two guys with should say running back, two guys at about
a thousand yards each. Most of their touchdowns there the starting quarterback there,
I don't have the name in front of me, so I don't want to
get it wrong, but only about less than fifty past at ten I wanted
to say it was seven touchdowns, so they're not a past heavy team.
But do you think Campoint Central can maybe go to the air a little bit
more after what you saw Chicago hope do to try in and chain that script
from last year? You know, I think when you get to this situation,
yeah, I understand what's being said here, but you have to be
careful to not try to deviate too much from what you actually are. Yeah.
Maybe they maybe they maybe I might sprinkle a little bit more in and
you know, try to try to utilize that maybe a little more than they
have. But like I said, you have to be really careful to go,
well, wait a minute, these guys are susceptible to the past.
We've only we've thrown less than fifty passes all year, But we think we
can yeah yeah, particularly yeah, particularly a small school level like where one
a tow A. You don't have huge drops like these kids probably haven't practiced
like the passing game much all season long. We're now we're fourteen weeks into
the regular season here. These kids have been going since early August. All
the seven seven on seven would probably last time if Camp Point In Central participated
in any of those over the summer, like they really focused on a passing
game so while yeah, there's a possibility to take a few shots, I
wouldn't think that they're gonna have to. I wouldn't expect there to be a
lot of passing in this game, Suits, and you were saying, yeah,
I wouldn't either, you know. Like I said, I think the
Camp Point Central's focus is going to be. Hey, like we didn't put
our best foot forward last year. Let's let's concentrate on what we need to
do to execute what we do instead of trying to, you know, fit
that proverbials square peg into the round hole just to try to, you know,
exploit what Lenham might not be good at. Do what you do well,
and if that's not good enough, it's not good enough. But you
know, trying to alter in a grandiose way for you know, one football
game doesn't ever seem to work out very well. Bears Bears Insider Podcast checking
in here, Rick, This is Happy Thanksgiving, Kyle. See you Tuesday
morning for another Bears catastrophic loss. Be well, Suis. I'll tell you
what I did a fist pup. I completely forgot that the Bears didn't play
until Monday night this week. And while I love State football, I think
both of us full agree, like you are absolutely getting dead, Like we're
both dead on Sunday, so not having to worry about a Bears game.
I yes, so yes, Rick, we will be back with you on
Tuesday morning and talk about Bears losing to Minnesota. I'm taking this off track
a little bit right here, but has there ever been a team where the
worst winning percentage that has more national profile games where they're the only option to
watch football? I mean, it seems like the Bears are on a Thursday
night or a Monday night or Sunday night like half of the season, and
it's incredible considering the quality of the product. I just it blows my mind.
Who made that? Well, you know it is a good sitcom,
So you got that going for you? I guess yeah, I suppose.
All right, let's go to two way. We've got Wilmington and Athens here
and Seuss. I don't really know how to say this other than the fact
that I come into this game thinking Wilmington. When you look at the competitive
results results, Wilmington handles morea forsythe handily Morrows Foresyde beat Athens earlier this season.
Wilmington just playing really well, right, now I have the Wildcats are
a fairly substantial favorite in this game. I don't think that's off base,
but I think you have to be really, really careful to look at that
Wilmington MOREA of Forestide game and say Wilmington's five touchdowns better than morea of Wareside.
I think that really Wilmington won that game, and they deserve to win
that game. And I think if they played multiple times, Wilmington would probably
win more often than not. But I think that's a classic example of a
snowball game. And what I what I mean by what I say there is,
you know, one mistake snowballed into another mistake, and then it snowballed
into another mistake, and then all of a sudden, Moroa is in complete
chase mode, where Wilmington has a pretty good idea of what they're going to
be doing pretty much all the time. So that that football game did not
materialize in the way that I thought it would. I was a little bit
more confident that I know you were, and I'm not trying to you know,
score points here that no un on me I deserve. Yeah, that
Wilmington would win that football game. I did think they would win it coming
in, but I did not expect them to win in the fashion that they
did. I expected Wilmington to struggle a lot more in the secondary against Moroa
than they did. They stepped up big, they answered the bell, you
know. But for this game, I think it really comes down to execution.
They both like to do similar things. I do think Wilmington is the
favorite in this game, but I'm not convinced it's going to be a runaway.
Like I seem to think a lot of people do. Athan's can do
some things a lot of I will say. The rushing numbers are impressive.
They really are. And like I said, I think I think they kind
of mirror each other in a lot of ways. And you know, like
Wilmington, if they get a little bit of momentum, you know, like
I said, I don't think Wilmington is gonna run away and hide here.
I do think they're the favorite to win the football game. I think it's
just gonna be what you kind of expect from two way based running football teams.
And you know, if Athens plays well, Wilmington makes some mistakes,
we might have a football game. All right, Let's go ahead and move
on to Class three A Byron versus Mount Carmel, downstate Mount Carmel obviously in
this matchup here, soons you know, offhand here, I'm trying to think
odds on favorite for highest scoring game of the weekend. Yeah, I think
so. I think this is one of those situations where Mount Carnival comes in.
It's a substantial underdog in the game, I think, but the only
way that Mount Carnival can win it is to get it into a shootout mode
and and hope that they can just trade scores. So that's going to create
an environment where both these teams can clearly score points. So it's gonna be
up tempo, it's gonna be the teams are going to go up to the
line, you know, thinking that they can score it on pretty much any
play if they run from scrimmage. So that's going to create an environment where
I think we're gonna see a lot of points scored in this one. But
I also think it's a situation where if Byron kind of gets control of that
scoreboard, it might get ugly too. This is like, yea, we
know, we know exactly what Byron's gonna do in this game, right,
Like, yeah, we know what the Tigers are going to look like.
What's so fascinating to me is Mount Carla On the other side, I mean,
you got over three thousand yards of rushing offense at a three A school.
But the other thing when I say at three A school is because you
have a starting quarterback who also attempted well, I think two hundred and four
I think, if I got it right here, two hundred and four attempts
in the season, seventeen hundred passing yard, fifteen touchdown. That's a really
balanced offense at the three A level. Yeah, it is, and it's
one of those situations where you kind of look at what system has done over
the course of the year. He's the kind of guy that makes you really
nervous, especially at the at the three A, you know, the smaller
school level, because he'll make a lot of plays just out of nothing.
You know, you can school, and you can scheme, and you can
do all these things, but sometimes you've just got an athlete who you know,
draws one up and the dirt and goes and that's kind of what we
have here. He's capable of making some plays out of absolutely nothing. So
that's something that Byron has to have to put a lot of attention on and
make sure that they've got him accounted for, and that's easier said than done.
So, you know, I think, like I said before, Byron's
gonnat score cam Mount Carmel match that at the level Byron scores at, I'm
not sure no Carnival's defense is going to give up points in this game.
Byron has shown the propensity to not only score points but shut the opponent down
as well. So I think we might get you know, I don't know
we can have a consistent shootout over four quarters between these two teams, but
Byron's not gonna relent. I'll say that much. Can't Mount Carmel matching.
Yeah, that's that's what it comes down to it. We have a We
had an early leader in the clubhouse for my favorite name of the weekend,
Shade louder Milk. Yeah, I like that one, Shade louder Milk.
All right, let's go ahead, let's keep moving on here. We're going
along pretty quickly. Here, let's keep more popping along here. I'm pulling
up four A. Here we've got Saint Lawrence versus Rochester. This is gonna
be a fun one. Saint Lawrence. I'm gonna go ahead and bring Michael
Dwojack in now, who covers the Chicago Catholic League and the eas Subourban Catholic
Conference for Friday night drive. Michael, how you doing, man good?
How are you guys? Wonderful? So Saint Lawrence, what can you tell
us about you know what you're hearing for the Vikings in this matchup against Rockchester.
Well, we all expected Saint Lawrence to be here, right, like
we all had winning all these games and that kind of sad being Icy Catholic
winning on a blocked extra point against Being Academy in the semi finals. I
think this team is just you know, I talked to coach Nissan and starting
at the season, he talked to you, you know they most coaches say
say the same things. You know, I've watched these guys grow, you
know, I've been with them for the last four years. Like he talked
about how this senior group was his first, you know, recruiting class and
that kind of stuff, and you know, you kind of take that with
the grain of Soldier're like, well, every coach is going to be excited
about their kids and that kind of stuff. But as the season has gone
on, this team has just shown that they know how to win games.
And I think that's really important because you got an all stay running back like
Aaron Ball who can just you know, run the ball. You can figure
out different ways to kind of score. And you've got a quarterback who can
you know, if he can throw the pass, but he can also run,
and he's running in key situations for Saint Lawrence all season long. And
you've got a motivated group at this point. I mean, just hearing what
Neison talked about, like the no one expected them to be here at this
point. I think that's fair to say. And then I think they're just
riding the momentum at this point and they aren't really going to change much as
to you know, what they've done. They've found ways to beat Icy Catholic,
whom many considered to be the favorite to win the state title. They'd
be Leian Academy on a on a blocked extra kick in double overtime. This
team has the experience, they know how to do it. Now is just
about you know, doing it against an unfamiliar full La Rochester where you obviously
can get tapeing that kind of stuff. But maybe you haven't seen that kind
of style all season long. Yeah, sus, I mean this Saint Lawrence
team. You know, they faced Sween Saint Francis, they had a loss
there, they got to win over Providence, they had to win over Bennett,
they lost to Saint Rita. It's not like they haven't faced quality teams.
I don't think it's stretched to say, though, that this is gonna
be the best team. This Rochester team is gonna be the best team they
faced all year. Yeah. I don't think that's that's a stretch either,
especially when you consider, you know that IC Catholic was limited a little bit
in their personnel when Saint Lawrence won that game. So I think that would
be that the team that I would compare the two. You know, when
I've looked at Saint Lawrence over the Court of the Week Michael touchdown a little
bit there. I think the biggest credit that they've they have to their ledger
this year is that they've just figured out ways to win football games. They
may not be all that pretty, I mean, but when I look back
at like what they did in the regular season schedule other than Providence, the
win over Providence before they got the playoffs. They had not beat a playoff
bound team, So I didn't know where they were at really honestly heading into
the postseason. Because while most teams you can play that CCL card and say
this is the schedule that they played, Saint Lawrence didn't really benefit from that
as much as many of the teams in the conference because they played some of
the more struggling programs in the league as part of that schedule. So I
didn't know where they were at heading into the postseason, to be completely honest
with you. But it speaks to they you know, their determination, the
way that they've won games here in the postseason, winning the double overtime game
against Wheaton Academy, winning the game in the final minute against Icy Catholic.
This is a team that believes they've they've got a way to figure it out,
and they're gonna have to get creative here with Rochester because this is a
pretty good team. Yeah, tell us a little bit about this Rochester team.
Well, I think what what comes down to it, Like a lot
of people think about Rochester, they think about that high powered offense. They
think about the team that is just gonna ZiT down the field by throwing the
football, running the football, doing whatever they have to do, and scoring
a bunch of points. That is definitely true about this team. But I
think the difference for Rochester as opposed to other years that they've come down here
with teams is this is a This might be one of the better defenses that
Rochester has ever had. They you know, they've only allowed you know,
more than two touchdowns to three opponents this year, and for all that Rochester
is, that's pretty uncommon. You have a lot of scores that come out
of Rochester where they won sixty three to twenty eight or you know, fifty
two to twenty five, or they tend to give up you know, some
points along the way as well. But this defense hasn't letting it happen.
And then another little wrinkle to Rochester. They just heading into the playoffs,
they got Parker Gillespie back on the offensive side of the football. Gillespie missed
the first seven games of the season with a knee injury, and I had
a friend say that Gillespie had even available to them, could have literally lined
up almost anywhere on Rochester's offense and it would be surprising to see him run
the ball throw the ball, catch the ball in this championship game. And
you know, a couple of people have actually dropped the Hank Baby comparison on
him. I mean, that's that's pretty pretty lofty expectations. Yeah, maybe
not to the maybe not to the same quite level, but the same type
of mold of players that he can do a lot of different things is really
dangerous in a lot of ways. So that's kind of another wrinkle to this
team. You know, the combination of the defense and getting Parker Gillespie back
makes this Rochester team really really scary. We're in a potential opponent heading into
this final game. This is State Representative Steve Reich, and I'm happy to
sponsor this year's Friday Night Drive. There'll be plenty of time for politics down
the road, but for now, let's enjoy some high school football. Whichever
school you follow, give him your support. All right, guys, make
sure everyone who is watching us live today, if you can do us a
favor, give us a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel. We appreciate
that. Of course, stick to Friday Nightdrive dot com all week long.
We got a ton of preview content coming up there throughout the word that's going
up throughout the week. We already have one A and two way breakdown from
the SEUs up there. Three A and four A will be coming up rest
of the day, and then five A through eight A dropping during the day
Darren Thanksgiving and on Friday as well, of course, we'll have full coverage
from the state finals. We've got six guys going down on Friday. We
got eight guys down there. On Saturday, a lot of coverage coming your
way from the state championships. And on five A or on Saturday more,
we'll start with a very very intriguing matchup in Classify A between Joliet Catholic and
Nazareth Michael, what are you hearing about this one? I'm really curious to
see, you know, what is NAS gonna do this? Like I feel
like we've you know, always done the superlative about them, you know,
two and four last season winning a state championship. But are they really going
to go z and for it, you know, to start the year and
win the state championship? And I mean, at this point, you just
have to be confident, don't you If you're Nas, like you just have
a great passing game. Logan Malichick is playing probably one of the better playoff
performances in the entire state. You just being able to throw the ball everywhere,
making key plays. It's not like NAS hasn't been in anyone you know
good, you know, in the playoffs. Obviously winning against Career Rich to
start the season. You take down Carmel, you take down Weens Saint Francis,
and you hold on to the at I mean, they just have all
the confidence right now of just you know, being able to do whatever they
want offensively pretty much. And now you've got a defense that has shown that
they can, you know, make key plays to stop you know, high
powered opponents. You you were able to stop the triple option against Prairie Ridge,
You're able to stop an elite quarterback in Saint Francis, and obviously all
the talent that Carmel has. So I mean, if you're NAS, you
have to feel great right now. Obviously, you if you're a coach,
you're probably doing the one to know mindset and you're doing all the you know,
the cliches, but it's deep down you're probably feeling great because you just
are on a on a tear right now that you just need to finish that
up Saturday morning, and you are just gonna make the You're gonna make history
there. And then on the other side, as soon as you got a
Juliet Catholic team that's playing extremely well here in the postseason wins against Peoria,
Triad, Morris, Providence, those first three in real blowout fashion. Still
going back to that Morris game, and I know Morris had some injuries coming
into that game, but still very impressive. The way JCA is playing right
now, sus this put up all comes down to it or this all adds
up to a really fun matchup on Saturday morning. Yeah, it should.
And I mean even when you look at the Providence game that that score is
not really kind of indicative of how easily juliett Catholic kind of controlled that game.
You know, Profdence scored first, but after that it was pretty much
JCA all the way into you know, late into the ballgame when Providence put
a few more points on the board to make it appear closer than it was.
This has been a different football team since we started the playoffs. I
know I personally was kind of questioning whether what was going to happen with them
after let's be honest, I thought it was kind of a lethargic performance from
Juliet Catholic in Week nine against Saint Ignatius. They didn't really put their best
foot forward, so I didn't know where this team was, and they answered
that with authority. It's kind of been an old school Julia Catholic type of
playoff run. You know, let's lean on the running game and our defense
to try to do what we can do. But they can also sprinkle in
a little bit of that passing game with Adrian Washington, who's probably one of
the more productive wide receivers the Hilltoppers have had, and you know, I
can safely say maybe a decade or two, I mean, really is capable
of stretching the field and making some plays. I can't think of the last
time Julia Katholic had a receiver with the statistics that he's had. So,
you know, Joli Kathlic gets a lot of love for, you know,
defensive lineman Dylan Johnson. But I think the interesting thing about Julia Katholic's defense
is while Johnson's drawing a lot of attention, drawing some double teams and allowing
the other Jola Catholic players to kind of step up and make a play.
They have a lot of guys on that defense that are willing and capable of
making those plays. I can't even I could make you a list of names,
and you know, six or seven guys that could potentially step out of
the shadows and make big plays. That's the thing that I think is kind
of the undercurrent of the Joli Catholic departs. Dylan's great, but these other
guys are really getting the job done too. You go back starting here and
go back to one A quickly you go Lina Winslow than Wilmington, two A
Byron, and three A Rochester in four A. So far, I feel
like we've had at least moderate too, you know, fairly substantial favorites in
each class. This is the first one, guys, where I'm having a
real tough time picking this. Are you guys on the same page or do
you guys have a better feel for it than I do? Yeah, I
don't really know what I feel like. This game and maybe the Loyola Lincoln
Way East game are probably the tougher games to choose, just based on you
know, I feel like NASA has kind of shown you the entire year that
you know, you can kind of them on if you want to, but
they're going to find a way to win a game. And Joy Kathleck is
at a different level right now. They're just playing at a different you know.
And I saw them earlier in the season against sant Ariita. I thought
they played well against sant Erita, but I thought it was kind of like,
well, maybe this is like, you know, a quote unquote year
for them, they make the semi finals or the quarterfinals or whatever. But
they've obviously taken it to a different level right now, and I'm really curious
to see, you know, can Juliet Tamplick stop Logan Malichick. I feel
like that's a huge matchup that you got to figure out. Can you know,
can that pass defense really stop him from making big plays, you know,
both in the air and on the ground, like he can run the
ball too, and really you know, take advantage of those opportunities. So
yeah, I think that's a very close matchup. If I had to choose,
I'd probably go Nas because you just got to ride the hot hand at
this point and go for the history books. But I don't know, it's
probably down to a point or two for me if I was, you know,
setting the spread or anything like that, sus I want to every time,
I want to say I'm taking JCA in this game. I picked your
logan Malichuck dropping a dime into the back right corner of the end zone against
Prairie Ridge in the first round, and I go, am I really gonna
am I gonna pick against that? It's really tough right now for this one.
Yeah, I mean I I have made my pick, and of course,
if you're an Athro fan, you gotta like it because I've been long
about Nazareth multiple weeks this season, and I picked Joey Cat Now, unlike
in many times, you know, during the regular season, I usually just
put the pick down. For the finals, I put a score and I
did the old cop out when you can't really make a decision. I picked
it as a one point decision in favor of Joel a Catholic, because that's
genuinely what I feel like it is. It's I mean, it could really
kind of come down to that. But you know, like I'm not really
joking when I say I've been wrong about Nazareth all along, you know,
and maybe it's it's me trying to you know, backtrack on the fact that
when we started the season I had Nazareth as a top five team, and
even after seeing them in Week one, I was like, I still think
there's a lot of talent there. I think they can and then when they
dropped oh and four, I started to, you know, doubt whether or
not I was seeing what I thought I you know, what I thought they
could be. You know there it's They're such a perplexing story. They're obviously
very, very talented, but you still can't ignore the fact that they've lost
five games this season. Regardless of the fact that you know that it's com
against quality opponents, it's still lost five games that happened somehow. So we've
been a different team now, playing a lot better. But this I'll be
disappointed if this is not a great football game. And usually I don't I
don't go that far with one, but boy, it certainly looks intriguing just
looking at it on paper and with all the knowledge that we have about these
teams. This morning, Class six, say we get a match up with
Kerry Grove and East Saint Louis. This is a rematch of twenty twenty one
East Saint Louis obviously back in the title game, lost to Carry Grove in
an absolutely epic title game back in twenty twenty one, what many considered to
be the best state championship game that's ever been played. It's certainly in the
conversation, then, last year East Saint Louis really pounds per Ridge, another
team from the Fox Valley Conference that runs a triple option. They poleing the
Prairie Ridge in that game run away for the state championship. What do you
think, du It's like this is a different Et Saint Louis team than it
was a year ago. Obviously on the offensive line as a big difference,
lost that entire starting unit. Different on the defensive side too. They do
have a few names back, but you're gonna have a lot of kids that
are not that have are seeing the triple option for the first time. Yeah,
it's I have had a hard time kind of getting my finger on exactly
where East Saint Louis is on a week to week basis. Some weeks they
look like they are capable of, you know, beating anyone that you line
up across from them, and then other times it almost feels like they're kind
of toying with the opposition for fun. You know, I don't really know.
I know they're exceptionally talented and like you said, some different faces in
different places, but still when push comes to shove, they have players with
experience in big time games against quality opponents. I don't think that's a really
big factor that I guess the thing that is most interesting to me heading into
this game is I'd like to be in the in the uh I guess the
war room or the lab to see what Brad Seberg is cooking up here.
I just felt like in that matchup two years ago, there were a lot
of little things that if you weren't like keyed in on them, that Carrie
Grove did so well and just you know, did the did the little thing
that I always hear like football coaches talk about in games where they pulled off
what a you know, what is most perceived to be a giant upset.
Sometimes you win those games in centimeters rather than yards. And it felt like
Carrie Grove did every little thing that they could do to give themselves an opportunity
to win that football game, executed. Did it well? Can they replicate
it? I don't know, but I'm just interested to see what wrinkles Carrie
Girl brings to the table to try to combat the skill sets that obviously East
Saint Louis has in their bag. Yes, like I said, some different
names on East Saint Louis compared to a year ago, or especially two years
ago. And I went up to try and pull up the eh the stature
of East St. Louis from the IHSA website and got a dead link.
Yeah, you're shaking your right now. Yeah. So for let's for people
in you know, Northern Illinois that haven't paid as much attention to East Saint
Louis this year. Can you compare them the last couple of years. What's
what's similar, what's different? Well, I think that the constant is the
quarterback Pops Battle. He's the kind of kid that has seen his game develop
obviously, he has has always had kind of weapons on the outside that he
can go to and stretch the field with. Jesse Watson is kind of the
leading receiver of that group this year. But like always, if you put
too much attention on Watson, there's a number of other guys out there that
can make big explosive plays too. I think the interesting thing about this This
East St. Louis offense is tay Ryan Martin is the leading rusher for this
team, but he's not the listed starter and sometimes he will go long stretches
without playing in games, and I'm not sure what the reason is for that,
to be honest with you. Sometimes they deploy him, you know,
you know, one series on, one series off, or maybe he doesn't
play in the first quarter. It was the same thing that happened in the
Mount Carnival game. He didn't pop up in that game until fairly deep into
the context. So I don't really know what that is right now and why
that's the case. It was also another reason why hoping to get a look
at their stats because I wanted to see how it broke down this year in
terms of carries. But obviously wasn't there, so I don't know for sure.
But they they can score on a nine, but they can also hit
pockets where you can make life difficult for them because they want to go,
go, go, go go. So if you if you have a team
that kind of maybe stops a couple of plays in a row. They're a
very rhythm based team. When they're in rhythm, they're awesome When they when
they kind of fall out of that rhythm, they can get a little a
little sluggish and loggie on it. So I think the biggest key for East
Saint Louis in this game very very talented defense. Can they stick to those
keys. Will it be the things that they struggled with two years ago against
Kerry Grove, or will it be a dominating performance where they seem to have
figured out most of the nuances of that offense as they did in beating preer
Ridge last year. Which one of those shows up different personnel in a lot
of positions, but also you know some guys that know what they're doing,
that have a lot of experience in it too, So you know, you
can get an effort all over the spectrum from East Saint Louis, and it's
sometimes it's kind of hard to predict which one of those teams is going to
show up. Yeah, And the one thing I will say, we spent
a lot of time there kind of dissecting East Saint Louis, and I think
that's more so because we know what we're going to get out of Harry Grove.
We know the triple option. They're playing tremendously well on defense right now,
And honestly, they are executing their triple option offense about as well as
I've seen them do it, you know, either them or Prairie Ridge when
each of these team have made it to a state championship game. This is
about as well as I've seen it executed. So they're going to be on
top of their game against East Saint Louis. It's gonna be a fun one.
But let's go ahead and move on. Class seven A. Mount Carmel
Downers Grove North, Michael, you saw Mount Carmel on Saturday in that state
similar state semi final against Batavia. Uh, you know, all three of
us expected the Caravan to win. I don't think any of us would have
predicted that margin. No, that was just a Mount Carlos playing at a
different level. Even the Batavia coach said that he's never you know, they've
pled a lot of teams around Illinois and they just haven't seen a team like
that. They're just, you know, talented at every level. They're just
talented at every position, and they just know how to win big games.
At this point. I mean, Darien Deprix is doing ridiculous stuff like scoring
four touchdowns in the first fourteen minutes, he's breaking like three tackles and somehow
turning what was supposed to be like a two yard you know loss into like
a what was it seventy four yard game? Like he's just a multi talented
player. You got Jack Elliott has stepped into the quarterback position and he just
looks even better than Blady Dolling did last year. And that defense is just
so smothering and you know, they're always around you, they're always making plays.
Maybe bad thing you can say about the defenses. They kind of created
some late penalties and that allowed Batavia to drive last week and some you know,
some late hits that probably you know, Jordan Lynch was not happy about
it and is definitely you know, working on right now. But this Mount
Carmel team is playing at a different level. They talked about that Loyola loss,
how it motivated them, how that you know, they felt like they
could have win that game, and now they're on a mission to go out
and just show the rest of the state that, you know, they are
one of the best teams in the state. They get a match up against
Downards Grove North. Downards Grove North playing very well this postseason, so there's
no battle performance at a high level. But this is a tough, tough
matchup here. You know. I guess the one thing that I can say
for downers Grove North going into this game is they can still enter this contest
with a lot of confidence. They've played good teams, beat good teams along
this playoff route, a particularly dominant performance last week in the semifinals and beating
the top seed in the bracket normal community and getting there. A little wrinkled
to this, and I know weather had a lot to do with this.
Last year these two teams met in the second round of the playoffs. It
was a twenty four to six win for Mount Carmel. The downers Grove North
was in that game. Now, granted, like I like, and it's
important to point out weather was a big factor that weekend. It was one
of it was. It was pretty bad that week. But you know four,
downers Grove North, they're not They're not immune to this. They know
they're heading into this game as a giant underdog, but they have to feel
good about the way they're playing heading into it, and if they can come
out and do some positive things early in the game, you never know,
I mean, put some wind under their sails and try to make something happen.
All that being said, Big Mountain decline no doubt about it, because
I mean, I don't know. I can't remember the last time I felt
like a team was playing as well in the postseason as I believe Mount Cardinal
is playing right now there. And you know the coaching staff for Donald's Grove
North is preaching this well. I actually I shouldn't say that. There's two
tax as a coach. I feel like you could you could take here.
You could take the worthy underdog role no one believes in us, or you
could take it as Yeah, Mount Cardmell's a heavy favorite. If we go
out there and play scared, we're gonna lose. So let's just go out.
We're playing in a state title game. No one expected us to be
here. Let's go out and just rip it. I wonder what approach they're
taking here, because I think I would take the ladder there right, like,
just let's pull everything out of the bag. If I'm the coaching staff,
let's draw up anything we can and let's just go out and have fun,
and you know, see if we can catch lightening the bottle and knock
the caravan off bounced early in this game. Yeah, I mean there's a
lot of different ways that they could go with this, and like it's you
know, being in the situation like this, playing a team like Mount Carmel,
there's not a lot of wrong answers here because the expectation level is you're
gonna have to do something spectacular to win the football game to begin with,
so you can maybe take a few more risks than you would ordinarily, but
you know, had in hand, Mount Carmel is really a machine right now.
And it's like, I look back at the way they're doing things and
that what they did to Batavia really kind of floored me a little bit,
to be completely honest with you, not that I didn't think that Mount Carmel
was gonna win that game, but I certainly thought it was going to be
significant more competitive, you know, because I look back to the way that
you know, Batavia played with Lincoln Way East back early in the season,
and the fact that Batavia was playing pretty dark well heading into that game,
and to see what Mount Carmel did to them in that situation just was really
not that I was not that I'm surprised that Mount Carmel is a really,
really good football team, but it was eye opening at what level we're talking
about here, and that's that's where it really comes down to for me.
Uncle, You got anything else on this one? No, I mean the
only thing I could say from downers Grove North is maybe look at the Loyola
tape. I mean, look at what Loyola did. Obviously, I know
that's a Loyola obviously has different players and downers Grove North has obviously if we
got the size and that kind of stuff, but Loyola really did is the
only team maybe eastt Louis did pretty well do in Week one, but Loyala
is the only team that really has given Mount Carmel any sort of struggle this
year. And they did a really good job of just moving the ball down
the field, and the way they were able to do it was pretty much,
you know, not letting Mount Carmel score on key, you know,
third and fourth downs in their own territory. And whether you whether that's you
know, boxing up the middle and not letting Darry in the pre getting a
couple of yards here or there, or whether it's you know, making sure
that you're not letting Darry in the pre catch the ball and you know,
kind of zoning in on him. I mean, I think if you're a
coach, they've probably done this at this point. But you look at the
Loyola tape and you just see, you know, defensively, you can stop
Mount Carmel if you you know, all the right play obviously, and you
also just look at, you know, taking Darie in the pre out of
this game. They got Jack Elliott. He can run the ball pretty well
as well. But if you take away the pre you take away a really
big component of the Mount Carmel offense. All right, guys, one game
to get to here before we sign off, and that is the Class A
State championship game between Lincoln Way East and Loyola. We talked earlier about about
our favorite game for highest scoring game of the week. I think this is
probably the easiest pick for lowest scoring game of the week, going in into
it at least lowest total, I should say, sus well, I can't
see anyway that this this one turns into a high scoring back and forth to
bear it just it would go against the grain of both of these two teams
and their hallmarks. You know, I've seen Lincoln Way East quite a few
times over the last couple of weeks at least in pieces, and Lincolna East
has had some really really good defensive units in the past, and they've they've
been very difficult to move the football against. The ease that this team seems
to play defense with right now against teams that usually come in with a pretty
high offensive pedigree is really really, I guess, eye opening more so than
anything else. It's a very very good defense. And for somebody to hang
a bunch of points on that, I don't, I just don't. I
don't see it. I just I mean, you'd have to You'd have to
line up some really really incredible offensive players all in the same place just to
be able to do that, because this is a great defense at all three
levels, particularly on the defensive line, which doesn't blitz a lot, but
seems to find itself in opponents backfields on every single play. It's I mean,
I kind of sometimes I kind of want to ask, like, you
know, one of their defensive linemen if they want to, you know,
put a chair back there. I mean, they're so comfortable in the opposing
teams backfields, so it's a really really great defense. The offense is a
little bit more lunch bucket. We're going to do what we have to do
to get past you. But they've even shown signs of doing a little bit
more now over the last couple of weeks. So I think Lego Waste isn't
a really good place for this game, is it? Is it good enough
place to beat Loyola? I don't know. I'll be completely honest with you.
I don't know, Michael, what are you What are you hearing on
the other side of here? What are you hearing from the Ramblers? I
mean, Loyola probably had it's I wouldn't say it's worst win of the season,
but I mean they were down fourteen to three against York like that.
That was the first time, I mean, we've talked about this Loyola defense
how elite it's been all season, obviously comparing it with Lincoln Wize for the
whole year, But that was the first time this defense looked like, oh
wait, someone is actually able to do something against this defense. Falling behind
fourteen to three, So I mean, I'm really interested to see how that
defense responds. I mean, you've seen a couple of times this season where
you've gotten mixed reviews. I mean you've had you know, the defense kind
of have a slow start and then they regroup and the course they do what
Loyola does, take away the run and then strangle you there and then take
away the pass. But you've also had moments like Mount Carmel where they started
the game with four or three big stops to start the game. So I'm
really curious to see how this defense defense come out, because if it plays
the way it did against Mount Carmel, I don't think Lincoln Way East will
do a good job of moving the ball down the field. But I think,
you know, if it plays the way it did against York or against
you know, Saint Rita earlier in the year, Lincoln Waste would need to
take advantage of that pretty early and take advantage of that and then offensively,
I mean that all comes down to Ryan Fitzgerald. I mean, he's just
the quarter he's stepped in for Jake Sturney. I think he's you know,
Jake Sturney was a really good player and is doing a lot of great stuff
at Colcate right now as a freshman. But I think Ryan Fitzgerald is playing
at a higher level than even Sturney was playing at. He's making the right
calls, he's making great pass he's he's not afraid to run the ball,
and he's showing a lot of confidence this entire season where Loyal might struggle offensively.
Drew McPherson, they're starting running back, is dealing with a little bit
of an injury. So obviously we won't know anything about that until you know,
game time. No one's gonna give us any updates or anything like that,
but you know, is he able to Is he able to play because
he's not only you know, their top rusher, but he's a really big,
you know, receiver for them as well, being able to kind of
come out from the back. So, you know, New York game was
really interesting just to see, you know, Loyol in a position that they've
never really been in this entire season. But you also saw Loyola kind of
regroup in a way that they'll need to do if they want to compete with
Lincoln. Ways to Sarty, yeah, the Loyola score or the score against
York gave me a little bit of pause, but I'm still taking the Ramblers
to win this game. I do think it's gonna be really low scoring.
In one of those where if you know one team, if one team has
a put break, just one big play for a touchdown, it could be
the difference in this game. But I'm taking the Ramblers suits, how about
you. I'm also taking Loyola once again. It was another one of those
situations where I was picking scores for this game, and the first first time
that I put a score down, I think I put ten to seven,
and that I changed my mind, and I joke, I jokingly put it
forward to before finally settling on settling on what I thought it would be.
But I, like you said, I think this game may hinge on one
team breaking a big play here, and then it might actually become a special
teams battle it has before. I mean, this game has come down to
field goal differences in the past. They have a lot of history against one
another, and none of those games has either of the two teams been able
to clearly separate themselves from the other. There's really no way that you could
really make a strong case for this game being anything other than a low scoring
defensive struggle based on what's happened in the past. Michael, you taking the
Ramblers as well. Yeah, I had a fourteen to thirteen score because I
just wasn't able to choose, so I just went loyal of fourteen to third
team. But if it does come down to special teams, it'll be really
interesting. Obviously, Loyola has an all state kicker and Mikey bake Or he
can you know, make it pretty far and has done a really good job
as a wide receiver as well. But I just think based on what we've
seen from Loyola, they've know, they've found ways to win. They beat
they held down to beat Mount Carmel in Week nine obviously to win the CCLS
CC Blue. They found a way to come back deal with some adversity against
York, and I think they find a way against Lincoln way He's I think
that offense has been pretty prolific this season, and even when the defense maybe
hasn't played as well as it has all year, you know, I think
the offense has found ways to make plays. And I know Lincoln way He's
defense is probably the best, if not the second best defense they'll see all
season. But this offense has me confident that they'll find a way to make
a player two in order to get over the hill here. Make sure you
follow Michael on x at m DWO Jack ninety four. Also follow him on
Instagram and threads. He'll be with us down in normal all weekend for coverge
of the State finals. We got to get out of here, though,
sus Can you give us some final thoughts headed into the weekend? You know,
when we look at this weekend coming in, I think the one thing
that's really striking to me is that it kind of feels like we're running it
back from previous state championship weekends. Here, twelve of the sixteen teams have
been at least in at least one state championship game since twenty nineteen. So
think about that for a minute. Like, usually you've got a little bit
of turnover here, but there's really a lot of teams that you're accustomed to
seeing in these state championship games, and with that comes the experience of having
gone through this before. It's not the same kids, but it's the same
coaching stats, it's the same programs, so they know how to deal with
the situation that comes with the state championship game. So I expect a lot
of good football game games this year. There's obviously going to be some nerves
that teams have to work out to be playing in state championship games. But
like I said, there's a lot of teams that have been there, done
that before, So I think they're going to come out here with purpose,
and I think we're going to get off a lot of good football games.
I think, particularly on Saturday, I think we could be on tap for
a lot of fun. Sounds like a great reason to stick to Friday Night
Drive dot Com all week and long. We're gonna have a ton of coverage
from the state or the State Final down in normal for now that we're gonna
go ahead and sign off well, Thank Michael Giojack for joining us this morning.
Here. Of course, once again, he covers the Chicago Catholic Conference
at East Suburban Catholic Conference for Friday Night Drive dot Com. You can find
all of his content there again. Follow us on Twitter at fn Drive,
on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram as well. Go to Friday Night Drive
all weekend. We'll be back with you guys early next week here on YouTube
to break down the state championship games. Everyone have a great week and enjoy
the State Final. We'll talk to you guys next week. Schwiker, Ganison,
Krizak, Rundio Bradley sponsors to Friday Night Drive. I'm Mike Krizak.
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