#8 Aurora (Metea Valley) (5-4) at #1 Aurora (Waubonsie Valley) (8-1) (map), Sat., Nov. 1, 1PM
In his 25-year coaching career, which has included 165 victories combined at Marmion and Waubonsie Valley, Paul Murphy has seen a lot.
But as his top-seeded Warriors enter the Class 8A postseason with a 8-1 record for the third time in the last four years, Murphy will encounter a coaching first on Saturday when District 204 rival, eighth-seeded Metea Valley comes calling for the second time in five weeks.
While Saturday marks the first time one of his teams have opened up postseason play against a conference opponent, it’s the third time in as many years Waubonsie Valley gets a rematch with an opponent it played in the regular season.
“We’ve got the experience of playing somebody before in the playoffs last year when we played Oswego in the second match,” Murphy said. “So for us, for our seniors anyway, this isn’t a new experience getting ready for a team you’ve already played in the playoffs and I think hopefully that’s an advantage for us where it’s Metea’s first time in the playoffs, so it’ll be a little more unfamiliar to them. But honestly both teams are going to make some tweaks to what they tried to do the last time.”
A local opponent in the postseason isn’t a rarity for the Warriors, as well.
Waubonsie Valley, fresh off claiming a piece of its first conference title since 2010 and the third conference title during Murphy’s 10-year tenure, beat Naperville North in the first round last year while losing to its other District 204 rival, Neuqua Valley, in a Class 8A state quarterfinal in 2012.
But while those two meetings stand out because of proximity, neither one of them has anything on what awaits the crowd that will fill Dick Kerner Stadium on Saturday.
Situated four miles apart, the rivalry between Metea Valley (5-4) and Waubonsie Valley (8-1) perhaps stands above the rivalries the two schools share with Neuqua Valley because of that sheer fact alone.
“I mean, if winning a playoff game isn’t enough motivation, just adding all those things into it, I mean, that just increases the hype,” Metea Valley senior quarterback Kyle Mooney said. “I mean, we made our season goal to make playoffs for the first time and now we move past it. It’s basically a whole new season, so our goal, obviously, (is) we want to fight every single week. With the first week, obviously it’s a huge game. We want to beat our rivals.”
Back on Oct. 3, the Warriors raced out to a 38-21 third-quarter lead before the Mustangs answered with 16 unanswered points to pull within a point at 38-37 following a Bryson Oliver touchdown run, only to miss the extra point and eventually fall 38-37.
Oliver ran through the Warriors’ defense to the tune of 258 yards and four touchdowns while Mooney had an up and down night, which included throwing two interceptions.
“There’s no question Oliver’s a damn good back and you got to try to slow him down and Neuqua didn’t do a bad job of it last Friday night,” Murphy said. “So I think you get a little bit of a template from what Neuqua did last week (in holding Oliver to 123 yards) and that gives you something to go by.”
Meanwhile, Waubonsie Valley quarterback Zack Bennema enters postseason play with 24 touchdowns and exactly 739 passing yards and 739 rushing yards as he and senior running back Tony Durns have taken turns leading Murphy’s option attack.
Durns ran for 172 yards and four TDs in the first meeting, Bennema was held to 58 rushing yards while only throwing the ball five times, completing two passes for 77 yards and a touchdown.
Over the last two weeks, Bennema has accounted for 10 touchdowns in Warrior victories over Neuqua Valley and South Elgin, a two-week stretch that has seen him throw for three touchdowns apiece in both games.
“It definitely adds an element to our offense that teams are going to have to account for,” Bennema said.
Murphy echoed his senior signal-caller sentiments.
“Well, he’s coming along. He’s had a great year running that option all year and now we’ve added the dimension of being able to pass,” Murphy said of Bennema. “I think the first time we played Metea we only threw five passes, so, I mean, obviously it’s something else they need to worry about.”
For Metea Valley, making its postseason debut as a program, giving the ball to Oliver and having him carry the load is a pretty easy decision to make, given what he did against the Warriors in the first meeting and what he’s done all year—given his 1,591 yards and 17 touchdowns.
But for the Mustangs to have a chance to pull the upset and earn their first-ever victory over the Warriors, Mooney will have to be more efficient than he was on Oct. 3.
“I mean, he’s the quarterback and he’s knows how important his play is and his execution of running our offense and getting us into good plays and all the different responsibilities that come with playing quarterback,” Metea Valley coach Ben Kleinhans said. “So the comforting thing about Kyle is that he’s got a short memory and he’s got such a calming presence and there doesn’t seem to be … the moment doesn’t seem too big for him.
“No matter who we’re playing—he’s the same guy, no matter what. He doesn’t get too excited when things are going well and he has that short memory when he’s not playing well or the team isn’t playing well. Our team feeds off that. Getting to the next play and the play you’re on is the most important play and the past is in the past. So that’s very comforting and it puts us in a good spot and we’re very confident that he’ll execute at a high level on Saturday.”
Metea Valley’s players will have a lot of different emotions flowing come Saturday as they collectively make program history and aim to lay a big footprint in the sand for future Mustangs to follow.
The fact the Mustangs open their first-ever postseason opposite the program most of their players would have gone to prior to Metea Valley’s opening in Aug. 2009 just adds to the uniqueness Saturday will bring.
And their third-year coach, a 1999 Waubonsie Valley graduate himself, has a bit of advice for them.
“When plays are there … in the playoffs, when there’s an opportunity to make a play and big plays, you got to execute,” Kleinhans said. “You can’t miss it. You can’t let it slip by because it’s not going to be there again.”
