No. 9 Naperville Central (4-1, 4-1 DuPage Valley) @ No. 15 Batavia (5-0, 3-0 Upstate Eight River), 7:30PM
Last week: Naperville Central beat Wheaton Warrenville South, 20-8; Batavia won at St. Charles North, 48-28
Storyline: Armed with a 4-1 start overall and inside the DuPage Valley Conference after five weeks, Naperville Central travels to Batavia on Friday for its only nonconference game of the year looking for playoff eligibility.
What the Redhawks will see is a program that’s off to an unblemished 5-0 start and is averaging 39.2 points a game on offense and has scored at least 35 points four times.
The Bulldogs got 191 yards and two TDs on 33 carries from running back Zach Garrett in last week’s 48-20 victory at St. Charles North.
Batavia quarterback Kyle Niemiec, who has thrown for 1,191 yards, accounted for 219 total yards and four touchdowns against the North Stars and has 14 total touchdowns through five games.
Garrett, meanwhile, has nine rushing TDs thus far on the season to go along with 524 rushing yards.
While the Bulldogs’ offense has rolled through five weeks, their defense has given up a share of points, which Conor Joyce and company will look to exploit.
Aside from a 28-0 shutout of St. Charles East in Week 4, Batavia’s defense has given up an average of 20.8 points a game.
Joyce’s two TD runs in the fourth quarter of last week’s 20-8 victory over Wheaton Warrenville South put the Redhawks in front for good, but it was his passing that might be the biggest development.
Joyce threw for 188 yards and connected with Iowa-bound wide receiver Emmanuel Rugamba six times for 166 yards and a 75-yard touchdown.
Both programs – who are old Little Seven rivals – won state titles two years ago in DeKalb, with Batavia winning the Class 6A state title and Naperville Central coming away with the Class 8A state crown.
Naperville Central coach Mike Stine on Batavia: “Their quarterback (Niemiec) is a dual-threat kid, very good with his arm. They’ve got two or three tall, 6-2, 6-3 receivers. Their running back (Garrett) is kind of like (Kevin) Clifford. He’s short. He’s very stocky. He’s fast. He’s maybe not quite as shifty as Cliff was, but he’s the same kind of runner. He can make good plays.
“They run a bunch of different formations. They’re going to throw a lot of things at you. They run up-tempo. They want to run a lot of plays. It’s not unusual for them to get 80, 90 offensive plays in a game. I think their offense is similar to Neuqua Valley. They give you some of the same kind of difficulties defending them.
“I think some of (Batavia’s defense giving up points) is some of the teams they play – both teams play up-tempo. One game, there were like 190 plays, so that’s two games. So if they’re scoring 35 and giving up 20, you cut that in half in a normal game. So they’re running a lot of plays. I think Oswego ran up-tempo. It’s hard to tell on film, but I think they did. I also think Plainfield North was an up-tempo team.
“We like to keep it close and find a way to win it in the end. That seems to be our M.O. recently. So I guess that what we’re going to do. If we have to score quick, we feel like we got weapons and tools that we can do that and we unleashed a little bit last week. But that’s really not our style. We want to score, but I’d rather score eating up nine minutes on a 19-play drive than (a) one-play drive.”
