Tigers shake off last season's first-round blues

What a difference a year makes.

Wheaton Warrenville South put to rest the demon that has haunted them after an early exit in last year's playoffs with a 61-6 rout of first-round Class 7A opponent St. Laurence on Oct. 30 at Red Grange field in Wheaton.

"Before the game started Coach (Ron) Muhitch brought it up in the team meeting room and talked about how bad of a feeling it was losing that game in the first round last year," senior guard and kicker Nick Immekus said. "We are not taking anything for granted this year. We are playing on all cylinders and want to make a good playoff run."

It took just two plays for the second-seeded Tigers (9-1) to show the seventh-seeded Vikings (6-4) they meant business.

Running back Matt Rogers (11 carries, 116 yards, two touchdowns) burst up the middle for a 61-yard touchdown at 11:11 of the first and after a missed extra point, South was ahead 6-0.

With good field position at the St. Laurence 49-yard line, South drove to the Vikings' 1 after a 14-yard pass from Reilly O'Toole (10-of-12, 153 yards, four touchdowns) to Greg McAndrew.

Rogers would score his second touchdown from 1 yard out, capping off a 10-play, 51-yard drive and a 13-0 lead with 2:25 left to play in the quarter.

"It was big for us to come out and score early on them," O'Toole said. "With our defense playing the way they were, we knew it would be hard for them to get back in the game."

The defense then took over for the Tigers as Shane Dierking stripped the ball out of a Vikings' running back's hands, returning it 22 yards for another Tiger score at 1:22 and St. Laurence was staring at a 20-0 deficit to start the second quarter.

"You cannot make mistakes like we made early on in the ball game," St. Laurence coach Jim Grannan said. "We did not move the ball well offensively tonight, give South credit they put us in a big hole that we could not dig our way out of."

It only got worse for the Vikings. A Joseph Krob interception of a Kevin Dineen pass gave the Tigers the ball at the St. Laurence 20.

O'Toole hooked up with Steve Kmiotek for a 20-yard pass play into the end zone and South was up 27-0 with just seven seconds gone in the quarter.

O'Toole continued to have the hot hand, tossing another touchdown, this time to Dan Hohenstein for 10 yards and with 8:32 to play the Tigers had extended their lead to 34-0.

"You have to give a lot of the credit to our offensive live play," Muhitch said. "They been improving ever week. We have two big bookend tackles that are very similar to our o-line from 2007."

With Immekus kicking the ball in the end zone after every Tigers' score, St. Laurence would have poor field position to start each drive.

But the Vikings finally got their offense on track late in the half. A big 45-yard pass play from Dineen to Steve Fiorella gave the Vikings the ball at the Tigers' 25. Nine plays later, Dineen connected for a 5-yard touchdown pass to Josh Johnson and with 2:34 left in the half St. Laurence was finally on the board, 34-6.

"We have a lot of kids that go both ways," Grannan said. "I'm not taking anything away from South, they are a great team. But when they put almost 90 players on the field and we have half that, it is going to take a toll on these kids."

South would score two more times before the half have ended as O'Toole connected with McAndrew again for 35 yards at 1:48 and Mack Tracey for 26 yards with 42 seconds left bringing the score to 48-6 as the first half came to a close.

"A lot of people don't understand we a have a multiple weapon offensive receiver core," Muhitch said. "That's why our numbers don't shock people. You have teams with one guy with 50 receptions. We have five kids with 20 receptions. And that's a credit to our offensive scheme and our coaches."

Second-half action saw a running clock and another running back light up the scoreboard for the Tigers as Julian Banuelos outran a host of Viking defenders for a 27-yard touchdown, bringing the South lead to 55-6 at 4:24 of the third quarter.

St. Laurence continued to struggle offensively as the South defense would hold the Vikings to just 9 yards of total offense for the third quarter and only 32 yards for the entire second half.

With many of the starters on the bench for the final quarter of action, reserve South quarterback Ryan Crowe took it in for one final Tigers' score on a 1-yard run with 6:13 to play.

"This was big to get last year's loss behind us," O'Toole said. "Now we need to focus on moving forward and just take the playoffs one game at a time,"

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