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EDWARDSVILLE – Not even in Edwardsville's worst nightmares could they have seen this one coming.
The Tigers ran out to a 28-0 lead on Naperville North at quarter time, then held a 42-14 lead on the Huskies at the half; they even extended it to 49-14 at the start of the third quarter.
No doubt Tiger fans were thinking of a running clock to finish out the game. The Huskies had other ideas.
Right after a Dionte Rodgers touchdown made it 49-14 for the Tigers early in the third, a 70-yard kickoff return for a touchdown from Matt Maschmeimer and a two-point convert cut the Tiger lead to 49-22; from that point, the Huskies were on their way and came from behind – with Drake Davis scoring from a yard out with 21.5 seconds left in the final quarter – to stun the Tigers 53-49 at Tiger Stadium Saturday afternoon.
“I want to credit Naperville North,” said Tiger coach Matt Martin. “Those kids kept fighting, they kept executing and they deserved to win, so congratulations to them.”
The Tigers had jumped out to that 28-0 lead thanks to the efforts of junior quarterback Kendall Abdur-Rahman; he took off on a pair of touchdown runs in the opening term of 49 and 80 yards to go with a 34-yard TD run from Rodgers and a two-yard plunge from Antonio Thigpen, but Abdur-Rahman came out of the game after the first quarter after his body began to cramp.
When asked if it was a tough decision to take Abdur-Rahman out of the game, Martin said “it was very tough. It would be one thing if you can get a running clock with that kind of lead – that's no knock on them, it's just hard to come back with a running clock (which begins in the second half if a team has attained a 40-point lead); that was our goal, and we had a critical fumble (in the third) that they scooped and scored and I felt like that changed the chance to get a running clock in he second half – that was the game right there, not necessarily the game, but that was a critical point right there.”
Huskie coach Sean Drendel put it simply to his team at the half. “We've got to tackle,” Drendel said. “Blocking and tackling, that's what it's all about, and holding on to the football – we turned it over four times in the first quarter, and it's hard to win games when you do that.”
Once the Tigers had gotten out to the 42-0 lead, Drendel told his team not to focus on what could be. “We told our kids to focus on the next play,” Drendel said. “Let's not even look at the scoreboard, let's worry about the next play, so I told them 'next play and let's try to play it well'.
“We lost 18 starters from last year's team, so we had a lot of young kids playing and a lot of nervousness and a long trip, but we got out of our funk and we started playing Huskie football.”
Maschmeimer's kickoff return helped set the tone for the second half, especially considering it came right after Rodgers' TD run, Martin felt. “That was huge for the offense; that set the tone for not just our offense, but our team in the second half,” Martin said. “We got the momentum, and then you go and make a special teams mistake – not good.”
When asked what he would say to his team after the loss, Martin said “this is the thing – it's how you play the game,” Martin said. “I know it sounds like coach speak, but it's how you play the game. Irregardless of the score – we always talk to the kids, whether you're down or if you're up by a lot – we coach them hard; it's about playing the game with the right effort, the right execution.“We've gone into film on Saturdays and we've won by 35 points and we've been upset about it as a staff, so I'm sure we're going to see some mistakes that we need to work on and get it corrected, and if the kids buy in, we'll get better.”
Next up for the Tigers is a 7 p.m. Friday home game against traditional St. Louis-area power CBC before EHS heads to East St. Louis for a Sept. 8 Southwestern Conference opener.
Dan Brannan also contributed to this story.
