Lezon, Wauconda finish it against North Chicago

Unlike two weeks ago, when he left Wauconda's stadium on a stretcher with a neck injury, defensive lineman Mike Lezon was finishing this game, despite getting dinged again.

It was homecoming, after all. And his team was winning this time.

"I got double-teamed blindsided during one of the plays," Lezon said Saturday after his 2 sacks helped Wauconda beat visiting North Chicago 47-6 in a North Suburban Prairie Division matinee. "All I was thinking was, 'Oh, please, not again.' I got back up and the ref asked, 'Are you OK?' I said, 'Yeah, I'm good.' Then I did a play and I was like, 'Yeah, I'm kind of dizzy actually. I should take a seat (on the bench).' "

Lezon missed two plays after getting the wind knocked out of him, he said, then got back on the field and helped the Bulldogs finish off the short-handed Warhawks to snap a two-game losing streak. Quarterback Kevin Malisheski scored 3 touchdowns and passed for a pair, and Wauconda's defense registered 8 sacks. Sophomore linebacker Tyler Stankiewicz also had a big day, as he came up with 3 sacks, 2 tackles for loss and a forced fumble, which Cameron Kruse recovered.

At 3-2 (1-1 NSC Prairie), Wauconda has realistic playoff expectations. The Bulldogs visit Grant on Thursday night and finish the regular season with games against Vernon Hills, Round Lake and Antioch.

"(The playoffs) would be a good goal," Stankiewicz said. "But we got to take it one game at a time."

Lezon understands the one-game-at-a-time philosophy. Against Lake Forest in Week 3, the senior said he got blindsided on a play, bounced on the field, rolled and lay still, knowing his neck was injured.

"My parents always told me that when you get hurt in the neck, just don't move," said Lezon, whose mother is a firefighter. "It felt so good to be back and playing, because it's my senior year."

"It was kind of a whiplash thing," Wauconda coach Dave Mills said of Lezon's injury, which kept him out of last week's game against Lakes. "With any kind with a neck injury, you're going to be very cautious. So we gave him some time off and got him healthy. He makes a difference for us."

Facing a winless North Chicago squad that had only 16 players in uniform, Wauconda pounced early. The Bulldogs struck on their opening series of the game, as Malisheski scored from 3 yards out, after hitting wide receiver Josh Anderson for a 20-yard gain on the previous play. On the ensuing possession for North Chicago (0-5, 0-3), Kruse scooped up a fumble and returned it 10 yards to the Warhawks 35. On the next play, Malisheski hit a wide-open Anderson for an easy touchdown.

Wauconda led 13-0 after one quarter and kept adding on. Malisheski threw a 14-yard TD pass to Joey Schaer and then scored on runs of 1 and 10 yards. Stevie Ciolek's 49-yard punt return to the 1 set up the Bulldogs' fourth score.

Trailing 32-0 late in the half, North Chicago got on the board when Charles Brown picked off Malisheski (7 of 11, 127 yards) and sped 40 yards into the end zone.

But Wauconda got the touchdown right back, as Anderson returned the ensuing kickoff 78 yards into the end zone to make it 40-6 at halftime.

"I liked how well we executed in the first half, outside of the Pick Six," Mills said. "We were moving at the tempo we want, and that's what I challenged the kids with at the beginning of the game."

Wauconda's Max Buechner (11 carries, 70 yards) scored from 17 yards out in the fourth quarter to start the running clock. Kruse, Jake Conour and Jeremy Hollander also had sacks for the Bulldogs.

"Our plan was to stop their speed," Stankiewicz said. "North Chicago is usually a faster team. Our goal was to stop the outside run and stop their pass, and if we did that, we'd be all set."

North Chicago coach Johnny Johnson was livid after the game. With his team trailing 13-0 early in the second quarter, Johnson was upset that a pass interference penalty in the end zone by Wauconda did not yield an automatic first down. He also expressed his disappointment with an unsportsmanlike penalty a Warhawk player received.

"We get ramrodded out of the game, and then we don't play hard enough to win the game," said Johnson, the volume of his voice rising. "We wait to the last minute to start cracking."