Naperville Central's size gives W. Aurora problems
Against Naperville Central, West Aurora showed that it has the big play athletes to play with anyone.
Leon Spears broke a 93-yard touchdown run and Aviance King made a great adjustment on a ball and turned it into a 76-yard TD reception.
But the Redhawks have their own special player in quarterback Nick Linne and they were able to show on offense that they are, well, just plain big.
Linne was able to find 6-foot-5 tight end Cameron Brate for two 15-yard TD receptions in the first half and 6-2 backup tight end Chris Levine also had two TD catches on the night, both of them 22 yarders, as the Redhawks defeated the Blackhawks 41-19 in the DVC opener for both teams.
The first TD pass to Levine that opened up the lead to 14-0 early in the second quarter showed pretty graphically that there wasn't much West Aurora could do against the Redhawks big receivers. The ball was slightly under thrown but Levine was able to come back to the ball and simply reach right over the Blackhawk defensive back for the TD reception.
"We didn't have anybody to match up with that tight end," said West Aurora head coach Buck Drach. "He's about 6-6, we didn't have anybody that could go up with him."
"Once we got out there, we saw that we had Brate or Levine over the middle for some open plays," said Linne.
After opening up a two score lead at the half, Naperville Central (3-0, 1-0) came out and ran the ball right at the Blackhawks, mainly on quarterback keepers by Linne. Linne amassed 258 yards in the air, most of that coming in the first half, and 153 yard on the ground, most of that coming in the second half.
"Coach Stine said coming out for the second half that we were going to put the game in our offensive line's hands," said Linne. "And they really came out and performed well, they wanted to prove they could pass and run block and they did that tonight."
"We knew we had some mismatches height-wise against them," said Naperville Central head coach Mike Stine. "We thought we would try to spread them out a little bit, then they went to the nickel package and that is when we started running the ball. If the defense doesn't have enough guys in the box we're going to run it. We let Nick make those calls and try to take what the defense gives us. When he's making good reads, our offense is pretty good."
West Aurora (2-1, 0-1) played hard until the end as King caught a 6-yard TD pass from quarterback Malcohm Wood to cut the lead to 35-19 with 5:35 to play in the game but Naperville Central just kept moving the chains and put together one last time consuming drive that ended with a 2-yard TD run by Nate Delisie that pushed to game to its final margin.
"I give West Aurora a ton of credit," said Stine. "A couple times we had them down and they kept battling back and we could never really put them away until right at the very end. "