Scouting Woodstock @ Lakes

Woodstock Blue Streaks (7-3) at Lakes Eagles (6-4)

When 7 p.m. Saturday

Radio WRLR 98.3-FM

Last week Woodstock def. Chicago Orr, 55-14; Lakes def. Chicago Senn, 40-20

Outlook It's not that Lakes is "just happy to be here," but well, Lakes is happy to be in the playoffs and happy the playoffs will finally be in Lake Villa. Woodstock earns a special place in Lakes history as the very first playoff opponent to visit Lakes High School. The Eagles are making just their second playoff appearance and in 2006, they lost on the road to Robeson. Last week, they won their first round game, but on the road. "We're really excited about that," Lakes coach Luke Mertens said. "This is just awesome for the school and the community. Not a lot of teams are playing football right now, so we're proud of that and we're very happy to be at home for the first time ever. We just don't want to come off as being satisfied with that. We're just getting started."-Lakes' gets its offense started with running back Andrew Tubek. The 5-foot-6 senior packs a powerful punch and is tough to bring down. Last week against Senn, he rolled up 153 yards on 15 carries, including a 91-yard touchdown on the very first play of the game. Behind Tubek, the Eagles rolled up the points last week, but they also rolled up the turnovers. They finished with 7 turnovers. In addition, they had 1 interception, for a total of 8 turnovers. "Plus, we dropped wide-open, walk-into-the-endzone passes, we let their quarterback scramble all over the place, we were not very sharp," Mertens said. "We were up 17-0 right away and then all of a sudden it was 17-14 at halftime. I think we looked at the scoreboard and we thought we were just going to kill those guys and then we let them back in. We have to have better focus than that from now on."-Woodstock improved its focus from the start of the season. The Blue Streaks limped out to a 1-2 record. "If you asked me after Week 3, if we'd be here now, I don't know-," Woodstock coach Steve Beard said. "But we've gotten much better. We went back to the fundamentals and we started playing much better." The Blue Streaks then won five of their next six games-Beard says that another reason for his team's success has been special teams. Kicker Scott Rausch is kicking touchbacks nearly 50 percent of the time. He's also 3-for-3 on his field goals-.Lakes got some good kicking of its own last week when Mike Beckman nailed a big 35-yard field goal when the game was still in doubt. He finished with two field goals on the game. "When we get into tight games, those touchbacks really can help out," Beard said-It also helps to have a prolific quarterback, which Woodstock does. Senior Logan Kunzie has thrown for an impressive 2,160 yards and 27 touchdowns with his favorite target being Mike Kremske, who has rolled up 48 receptions, 803 yards and 14 touchdowns. Kunzie has completed more than half of his passes (138-of-248) and he's been sacked only six times, which is a credit to Woodstock's offensive linemen: Jaimie Villa, Vito Manzella, Pat Miller Steven Vasquez and Andrew Stolldorf-The line has also done a good job of opening up holes for running Mike Litke-Litke is a very different running back from Tubek. Litke is 6-foot-4, 240 pounds. "Mike is a big guy and is going to Western Michigan on a full ride," Beard said. "He's tough to stop but so are smaller guys like Tubek. We played against a small back when we played LaSalle-Peru and you sometimes lose a guy like that behind the linemen. And they're definitely the kinds of runners who can make you miss." The Eagles also have another smaller running back in junior Tyler Menheer, who is 5-foot-9, 170 pounds. He scored 2 touchdowns last week.

Next week Winner gets the winner of No. 6 Vernon Hills at No. 3 Glenbard South