Kaneland cruises by Burlington Central

Late in the first half in Friday's season opener, many Kaneland fans began chanting, "Warm up the bus! Warm up the bus!"

Apparently Knights linebacker Derek Bus was listening.

Bus broke up a pass on a fourth down play, recovered a fumble and intercepted a pass to help the Knights handily defeat Burlington Central, 35-0.

"I think our defense stopped the run and when they decided to pass we had them beat there," Bus said. "We just try to make plays and get the ball back in the hands of our offense."

The 6-foot-2 senior wasn't the only one who came up big for the Knights as they held the Rockets to 110 yards of total offense.

"We're really trying to emphasize our defense and that's a big priority for us," Kaneland coach Tom Fedderly said. "We feel pretty good about it with experienced kids back and we expect more out of them this year."

Kaneland wasted little time getting on the scoreboard. All it took was its fourth play from scrimmage for quarterback Joe Camiliere (13-of-27, 319 yards) to connect with Brock Dyer on a screen pass for a 54-yard score.

The screen pass gave the Rockets trouble all evening and the combination of the passing game with hard-nosed running from Dyer (11 carries, 53 yards) helped the Knights find the end zone on three occasions in the second quarter.

Camiliere scored on a 2-yard keeper and connected for a 23-yard score to junior Taylor Andrews to give the Knights a 21-0 lead and then seemingly put the game out of reach in the final 1:25 of the first half. After a 17-yard pass to Andrews and a 6-yard screen pass to Dyer, Camiliere followed his blockers for an 11-yard touchdown run with just 22 seconds remaining before halftime.

"When we get our quarterback in a rhythm and a little bit of a running game going we're hard to stop," Fedderly said. "We also talked before the game that we don't want to be a team that kills ourselves and we didn't do that tonight."

The Knights didn't turn the ball over and only had 2 penalties, compared to the Rockets who turned the ball over 4 times and were penalized for 35 yards.

Ryley Bailey (5 receptions, 110 yards) scored the Knights final touchdown with a 20-yard reception early in the third quarter.

"Now we know where we're at," Burlington Central coach Aaron Wichman said. "The mistakes we made tonight are things we'll address and are things that are correctable."