No. 19 Buffalo Grove outlasts upset-minded No. 46 Andrew in old-school playoff victory

Buffalo Grove stuffed Andrew’s go-ahead two-point conversion attempt in the final two-minutes to scrape out a 28-27 opening-round home Class 7A playoff victory on Friday night.

After a touchdown run from senior running back Matthew Kaput gave Buffalo Grove (7-3) a 28-21 lead with less than 10 minutes remaining, Andrew (2-8) put together a 13-play, 57-yard touchdown drive to get within a point of the No. 19-seeded Bison with 1:58 remaining.

Thunderbolts head coach Adam Lewandowski said there was never any question as to whether his offense would stay on the field.

“If you go back through the history of our program, that’s what we always do. We’re always going to go for it,” he said. “We knew going into the game that if it came down to that, we were gonna go.”

Lewandowski tapped senior Landon Paredes for an outside handoff, but the Bison defense closed the edge and forced the Thunderbolts running back out of bounds well short of the pylon.

“There were a couple of plays we could have gone with there, and we went with the one that we had had the most success with in the past.” Lewandowski said. “They adjusted and made the stop.”

Kaput, a Bison linebacker and running back, said he was prepared for an outside run.

"(Assistant Coach Sean) Jacobs told me, 'You need to seal the edge on the right. They're going to be looking for that sweep again,'" Kaput said. "And they did it."

Both teams lived and died by the ground game, combining for 80 rushing attempts to just 11 total plays through the air.

Led by Kaput and sophomore quarterback Dominic Peterson, Buffalo Grove rushed for 167 yards and three touchdowns on 25 carries. Andrew took the ground-and-pound ethos a step further, rushing the ball 55 times for 271 yards.

Buffalo Grove coach Jeffrey Vlk said his team was better prepared for Andrew’s run-heavy offense after Buffalo Grove’s loss to Conant in Week 4 when senior running back Jackson Spizzirri gashed the Bison defense for 295 yards and four touchdowns.

“We were just trying to crowd the line of scrimmage,” Vlk said. “It was just a lot of disciplined football. And (Andrew) still did a great job.”

He credited defensive lineman Joseph Goduto, Owen Erickson and Drew Carrison as keys to the Buffalo Grove’s improved rushing defense, especially in their success limiting big plays. Despite Andrew’s 271 yards on the ground, its longest run of the night went for just 21.

“Our game plan was to control as much clock as humanly possible,” Lewandowski said. “We know that (Buffalo Grove) is obviously a high-caliber team, so we wanted to control as much as we could. And we did.”

The Thunderbolts employed a good bit of trickery to aid their upset bid. Andrew successfully executed an onside kick in the first quarter and a four-yard Philly Special touchdown pass from Paredes to quarterback Jimmy Reilly on fourth-and-goal to tie the game at 21 midway through the third.

“I’m constantly trying to create opportunities, constantly trying to create momentum and look for ways to hit them with an imbalance,” Lewandowski said. “That’s stuff we practice every single week, so we felt really good about it.”

Vlk said he was not expecting either play.

“It was 100% surprising. We really didn’t see much of that (on film),” he said. “They play in a really tough conference, so they had a lot of blowouts, and we didn’t see much trickery or anything like that during the regular season.”

Buffalo Grove will face No. 14 St. Rita (6-3) in the first round on Oct. 31.

“They’re a hell of a football team, they really are,” Vlk said of the Chicago Catholic League powerhouse. “I told our kids, ‘We can either pack it in or go get it.’ And they said, ‘Let’s go get it.’”