A second crack at Neuqua Valley at hand, Waubonsie Valley would have no regrets either way.
That meant tying its fate to Max Ihry.
Given all he had done for Waubonsie Valley coming into Saturday, Waubonsie Valley coach Paul Murphy was going to ride his horse until he couldn’t ride him any longer.
Ihry’s game-high 190 yards on 36 carries led the way as the 30th-seeded Warriors pulled off a 21-14 upset of the 19th-seeded Wildcats in the second round of the Class 8A postseason.
With Waubonsie Valley and Neuqua Valley deadlocked early in the fourth quarter, Ihry presided over the game’s final 9:41 with a dominance fitting of his 6-foot, 210-pound frame.
In a drive that spanned 3:26 and traveled 81 yards, Ihry carried the ball eight times, including a three-yard TD with 6:15 left, to put Waubonsie Valley in front to stay.
“I just realized that … I don’t really know how to describe it – it’s just that I’d have to get some yards because we really wanted this win,” Ihry said. “We had a slow start, but we didn’t let that get us down because we knew we’ve had comeback wins before. We just had a lot of heart. I think everyone played amazing. My O-line did well. They did amazing, too. Everybody did amazing.”
The Warriors (7-4), who scored the game’s final 21 points, advance to only their third state quarterfinal since 1994 when they host sixth-seeded Naperville Central next weekend.
Ihry churned out 66 yards during the eventual game-winning drive – with the other 15 yards coming on a pass interference penalty.
Of Waubonsie Valley’s last 17 plays from scrimmage, Ihry found the ball in his hands 15 times – with the pass interference penalty and a punt accounting for the other two plays.
“No. 1, Max is a warrior, and I went back to my roots of split-back veer,” Murphy said. “We were running inside veer, outside veer. They couldn’t figure out what angle to take because I was just mixing between inside and outside veer. That was our game plan coming in.
“We were going to open up with outside veer and run it until they figured it out. Once they started to adjust to outside veer, we were going to go back to inside veer. So it was inside, outside. You saw some speed option, which we hadn’t run most of the year. Our offensive staff came up with a hell of a game plan for these guys.”
While Ihry finished off an 81-yard scoring drive for the Warriors with a three-yard run, it was another 81-yard scoring drive the Warriors went on that truly changed momentum.
Coming out of halftime down 14-7, quarterback Jack Connolly proceeded to lead the Waubonsie Valley offense down the field in 13 plays – a drive ended with a nine-yard Connolly pass to Jake Schroeder.
Connolly finished five-of-seven passing for 62 yards and a TD while running for 19 yards and a 15-yard TD on fourth down late in the first half.
“We got the big score going into half to make it 14-7 and then at halftime, we really talked,” Connolly said. “We got the ball, so we need to come out and tie it up right there. We need to put together a big drive and we did. It carried over to the rest of the half.”
Neuqua Valley (7-4) got off to a quick start – courtesy of a five-play, 70-yard scoring drive on the game’s first possession that ended with a 51-yard TD pass from Jack Stankoven to Brett Borske.
In his last high school game, Stankoven completed 13-of-25 passes for 234 yards and a TD, but the Wildcats managed just 82 yards on the ground to the Warriors’ 232 rushing yards.
An interception from Owen Piche near the Wildcats’ goal line later in the first prevented the Warriors from getting points.
A two-yard Nick Osikowicz TD run with about four minutes gone in the second put Neuqua Valley up 14-0 and with seemingly all the momentum.
But Connolly’s 15-yard TD run on fourth down late in the first half started the winds of change in motion.
“Ihry made some plays,” Stankoven said. “He’s a hell of a player. He put some pressure on us. We struggled a little bit getting the running game going and they’re a good team. We just didn’t come out the second half and it’s tough.”
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