Naperville Central had no choice but to keep playing.
As defending state champions, you earn a reputation for being fighters with a sense of urgency while owning a striking resolve that you’re never out of any game.
Showing off the fight and grit eschewed by being a defending state champion and thanks to a 20-point fourth quarter, fourth-seeded Naperville Central engineered a 14-point comeback en route to registering a 34-21 victory over fifth-seeded Brother Rice in a Class 8A first-round game Friday night in Naperville.
Redhawks’ junior quarterback Conor Joyce’s two one-yard touchdown runs in the fourth quarter brought helped spark the 14-point comeback while senior linebacker Bobby McMillen helped finish it.
Joyce gave the Redhawks the lead for good with a one-yard TD plunge with 2:59 left in the fourth, as he led scoring drives of 12 and 15 plays, respectively, in the second half to help keep his team in it and his counterpart, Crusaders’ QB Alex Alarcon, off the field.
“We knew we could handle some stuff if we just (executed). Stuff would be there if we all did our job,” said Joyce, who ran for 30 yards and the two scores on 13 carries. “We knew that in the second half, so we came out with a different, better attitude and just came out and tried to make some plays.”
The defending Class 8A state champions advance to meet either No. 1 Waubonsie Valley, a 20-6 victor over the Redhawks in Week 1, or eighth-seeded Metea Valley on the road next week in the second round.
McMillen, the Iowa State-bound middle linebacker and the 2014 DuPage Valley Conference’s Defensive Player of the Year put the stamp on a stellar collective second-half defensive performance with a 15-yard fumble recovery for a TD after a high snap went over Alarcon’s head to put the victory away for Naperville Central (8-2) with 1:22 left in regulation.
“The thought process going into the second half is that we realized we didn’t play Redhawk football in the first half,” McMillen said. “That was our main thing going into the second half. We realized that was possibly only 24 minutes left of our season together, as one team. So that kind of lit the fire underneath us and we took the second half in stride and played Redhawk football.”
Helping Joyce lead the Naperville Central offense on those sustained drives in the second half that got the defense some much-needed rest was senior running back Kevin Clifford.
Clifford, the 2014 DVC Offensive Player of the Year, fought hard for his 79 yards on 25 carries but he converted a couple key fourth downs to keep Redhawk drives alive in the second half.
“We only had 24 minutes left together and that’s really what this game was all about. Playing for the man next to you, representing our names on the front, not on our backs,” Clifford said. “It’s not about individuals. We’re all playing together. We’re all loving the game. You know, it’s every single one of us just fighting. And that’s mainly (is we) get seven more days together. That’s what this is all about. Coach (Stine) stressed it at half.”
Brother Rice (6-4) busted out of the gate early as a pair of Alarcon touchdown runs pushed the Crusaders out to a 14-0 lead late in the first quarter, with his second TD run of the game, a two-yard TD run, being aided by a roughing the punter penalty on McMillen.
Alarcon, who had 48 rushing yards on eight carries in the first half, completed his first 10 passes of the night and finished the first half 14-of-19 passing for 127 yards and a touchdown.
For the game, Alarcon completed 24 of his 38 passes for 243 yards.
“We made an adjustment on the way we slid our front. They do such a good job of putting linebackers in tension and Bob was in a tough place where he had to play run and pass,” Naperville Central defensive coordinator Mike Ulreich said of the adjustments his unit made in the second half to keep the Crusaders off the scoreboard. “They put Bob in a lot of stress by his responsibilities, so we shifted the front so Bob didn’t have to play two things at the same time and I think that helped a little bit.
“Another part was our offense had long, sustained drives and we were able to get off the field on third down. But other than that, we made a small, simple adjustment. We just executed and got off the field when we needed to and played good football.”
McMillen would make up for his costly mistake by forcing a Marcus Jones fumble, recovered by Daniel Delgrosso, which immediately proceeded a 24-yard touchdown pass from Joyce to Emmanuel Rugamba, trimming the Redhawks’ deficit to 14-7 with 4:25 left in the first half.
But Alarcon led the Crusaders immediately down the field with an answer, finding the Northern Illinois-bound Jones on a screen pass for a 10-yard TD with 1:30 left in the first half to reinstate their 14-point advantage.
