[shareprints gallery_id=”748″ gallery_type=”filmstrip” gallery_position=”pos_center” gallery_width=”width_100″ image_size=”xlarge” image_padding=”0″ theme=”dark” image_hover=”popout” lightbox_type=”slide” comments=”true” sharing=”true”]It’s a 48-minute game and it’s a lesson Naperville Central is taking to heart.
For the second week in a row, Naperville Central used an overwhelming fourth-quarter effort to pull away from an opponent.
A week after putting up 20 fourth-quarter points against Brother Rice, fourth-seeded Naperville Central forced four fourth-quarter turnovers to help post a 24-14 victory over top-seeded Waubonsie Valley in the second round of the Class 8A postseason Saturday in Aurora.
All year long, Naperville Central coach Mike Stine has used the word special to describe his defense.
Thanks to intercepting Waubonsie Valley quarterback Zack Bennema three times in the fourth while adding in a Bobby McMillen fumble recovery on a muffed punt in for good measure, Mike Ulreich’s defensive charges put their collective foot down.
“We realized going into halftime that the way we were playing isn’t the way we should be able to play. It wasn’t the way we’ve been taught to play all year,” said McMillen, the Iowa State-bound linebacker. “So it was kind of like last week (against Brother Rice). At halftime, we kind of lit the fire underneath ourselves and realized we weren’t playing Redhawk football and in the second half, we came out and played the game we’ve been playing all season.”
The defending Class 8A state champions advance to their third state quarterfinal in the last four years and will meet either Hinsdale Central or Simeon next week.
Getting 244 yards and two touchdowns from workhorse running back Kevin Clifford, the 2014 DuPage Valley Conference Offensive Player of the Year, didn’t hurt matters either.
Clifford’s two TD runs in the fourth represented the only scoring for either side as the Redhawks have outscored their last two opponents, 34-0, in the fourth.
“We’ve been running a lot of tosses this year and they defended that obviously and they brought guys off the edge and they do a lot of stunting and stuff,” Clifford said. “But I feel like some of their stunts may have taken them out of some plays and I found some holes and hit it at full stride.”
Cameron Connors and Justin Wegner added interceptions of their own of Bennema, who went 11-of-20 passing for 120 yards with the three interceptions while accounting for the Warriors’ second TD of the game with a one-yard TD run that gave them a 14-10 lead late in the third.
Two of Bennema’s three interceptions came on successive passes while McMillen’s recovery of Keaton Casey’s muffed punt gave the ball to Naperville Central (9-2) at the Warriors’ 10-yard line and Clifford gave his team a 10-point lead, courtesy of a nine-yard TD up the middle, with 5:02 left in regulation.
“Turnovers were the difference there in the fourth quarter. It was back-and-forth all game until the turnovers in the fourth quarter,” Waubonsie Valley coach Paul Murphy said. “You got to protect the football and you can’t put it on the ground or throw picks against a good defense like they are.”
Severely limited a week ago against Metea Valley with an ankle injury, a MRI this week showed Tony Durns fractured his ankle in the Warriors’ regular-season finale against South Elgin and junior Max Ihry filled in admirably yet again in his absence.
Ihry’s 10-yard TD run with 1:54 left in the first half completed a seven-play, 67-yard scoring drive for Waubonsie Valley (9-2), which immediately answered a 29-yard field goal from Naperville Central’s junior kicker Connor Assalley.
Bennema had a 34-yard run up the middle of the Redhawks’ defense to get the Warriors inside the red zone and Ihry and Rodney Gee took care of the rest, combining to run for 15 yards on the next three plays to get the Warriors on the board.
“We didn’t turn it over the first three quarters and that’s why we were winning the game for most of the game because we were doing what we wanted to do early,” Murphy said.
Behind a 26-yard run from Clifford, the Redhawks got as far as the Warriors’ 17-yard line with under a minute left in the first half, but Assalley was wide left on his 34-yard field goal attempt.
Clifford had 88 yards on 14 carries in the first half for Naperville Central, which only recorded 122 total yards in the game’s first 24 minutes.
“Once I get a hole, it’s my job to really just make people miss and the offensive line is getting me in space and from there, it’s just all me,” Clifford said. “So (my O-line), they really do an unbelievable job—the coaching staff and the O-line fighting. Really our motto right now is ‘seven more days.’ … Just seven more days with each other is all we really need.”
