Metea Valley (1-1, 1-1 DuPage Valley) @ No. 4 Naperville Central (2-0, 2-0 DuPage Valley), 7:30PM
Last week: Metea Valley beat Naperville North, 29-28; Naperville Central beat Neuqua Valley, 14-7
Storyline: A week after meeting Naperville North for the first time ever, Metea Valley gets the opportunity to face Naperville Central coming off an exhilarating victory over the Huskies.
Conner Lovely’s six-yard TD pass to Brad Fekety with 51 seconds left to play gave the Mustangs their first lead of the night against Naperville North and eventually their first-ever DuPage Valley Conference triumph.
Lovely threw for 301 yards against the Huskies and overcame three interceptions, including a pick-six, while Metea Valley overcame watching the Huskies rack up 381 yards on the ground.
Lovely’s touchdown passes to Jordan Cagigal and Fekety in the last 5:50 of regulation helped the Mustangs erase a 28-15 deficit following T.J. Agyakye’s pick-six.
Naperville Central, meanwhile, comes off a hard-fought, 14-7 victory over Neuqua Valley that has it at 2-0 overall and inside the DVC after two weeks.
Luke Brady ran for 94 yards on 20 carries and his 12-yard touchdown run with 51 seconds to play in regulation gave the Redhawks their first lead against the Wildcats.
Naperville Central’s defense forced six three-and-outs as it allowed the offense enough time to finally break through.
Conor Joyce threw for 116 yards and a TD, a 33-yard second-quarter strike to Matt Lehmann, for a Redhawk offense that was outgained 261-224 but found a way to win anyway.
After facing Neuqua Valley last week and Metea Valley on Friday, Naperville Central completes the District 204 trio with a visit to Waubonsie Valley next week.
Metea Valley coach Ben Kleinhans on Naperville Central: “The thing about Central is they’re just solid in all three phases. It’s hard to find mistakes that they make. They just play solid, fundamental football. They’re very patient, just very patient on both sides of the ball. They’re going to run their offense. They’re not going to force anything and eventually take advantage of opportunities that are there. They’re not going to turn it over.”
“Then – on defense – they always just play such sound defense. They’re not afraid to give up some first downs, but when they get down close to that red zone – they tighten up and they bring their pressure. They force teams into some bad spots, but they’re just a good football team and we all know that. It’s going to take us to just continue to play better.”
“(Rugamba) is such a force on both sides of the ball – offense and defense. He has a huge impact on defense, as well. You look back at their Week 1 game, (Rugamba) had a big interception there against Glenbard North and ran it down the sideline there to put them in position to win. Last week playing defense, (Rugamba) knocks down the ball at the end of the game. But he’s an outstanding player, outstanding talent. You just got to contain him. You can’t let him beat you. He’s going to get his catches, get his yards. He’s going to make some plays.”
“They’re balanced. They’re really good with their balance. They’re going to run the football and they’re going to get the ball out to some other guys, too. So it’s just whole team we’ll prepare for.”
Naperville Central coach Mike Stine on Metea Valley: “We faced them this summer a couple times in 7-on-7. They’ve got some athletes. They’ve got some guys that can play. They spread the field offensively to force you to defend, try to get their playmakers in space. We’ve got to be able to defend that.”
“Defensively, they’re going to run two or three different fronts at you, try to mix things up, to try to keep you off-balanced. Again, we just have to be able to be responsible, responsibility football and do what we do. We don’t change a lot week to week.”
“(Lovely’s) a good athlete. He’s a good player. Their running back (Alonzo Taylor-Jones) is a good player. Like I said, they got guys that can make plays and they were obviously able to make some plays. They went over the top a couple times on Naperville North. So you have to be able to defend the whole field against their guys.”
“They’ll run a 3-4, which is similar to what Neuqua’s run. They’ll run 4-3, which is similar to what we run, which we see every day in practice. Then they’ll run kind of a hybrid of their 3-4 where they’ll bring their outside linebacker – so it’s really a 5-2. We’ve seen bits and pieces of it – their 3-4 look they like to run. I think that’s what they want their base to be and that’s similar to what our defense is. So we’ve been seeing that all summer and when they go into their three-man front, that’s what we saw some against Neuqua.”
“So it’s different players, it’s slightly different schemes, but there’s some similarities to what we’ve seen.”
