Palatine 27, Wheeling 0

Make no mistake: Palatine is poised, potent and confident after posting a 27-0 win Friday night at home over Wheeling.

Palatine showed up for practice for this game earlier in the week "as though they had won" the week before, according to coach Tyler Donnelly, even though they had a lost a heartbreaker.

The Pirates (1-1) dominated from start to finish, drastically cut down on the number of mistakes they'd made the week before and basically cruised on 453 yards of total offense while limiting Wheeling to 163.

"Our defense was flying around out there," Donnelly said, citing Conor Hanley, Jack Hansen and Ryan Cortez, who had a pass interception, in particular, as the unit's pace-setting leaders.

"Our defense played great," said quarterback Matt Rossi, whose pair of first-half 53-yard fade TD tosses to Tim "Mookie" Williams were perfectly executed.

"He's so fast. I basically just have to throw it out there and he'll run under it."

Those plays sandwiched a 42-yard, tackle-breaking TD scamper by Dan Sutton that gave Palatine a 20-0 halftime lead against a Wheeling team having its own problems with mistakes.

"We kept shooting ourselves in the foot. We had chances to capitalize on some things and we didn't," said Wildcat (1-1) coach Dave Dunbar.

An interception, a lost fumble on a pass that had picked up first-down yardage and a snap over quarterback Tim Powell's head all helped contribute to a pile of errors that buried the Cats.

Even though Powell showed a strong arm and wideout James Kurtz made some special catches, Wheeling never sustained a drive thanks to either the turnovers or some penalties in key situations.

Meanwhile, Palatine just kept executing, closing the scoring in the fourth quarter with an 80-yard, five-minute drive culminated by David Eanes' 1-yard plunge. He led all rushers with 96 of Palatine's 239 yards. Rossi threw for another 194, 106 on those 2 bombs to Williams.

"You can't out-throw Mookie," said Donnelly.