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Football: Playoff loss ends season for North Shore
North Shore Country Day Football 11511
Updated: November 8, 2011 7:18PM
North Shore Country Day football coach Jim Deuble won his 100th game in 22 years as coach of the Raiders in a 28-24 victory over Flanagan in Round 1 of the IHSA Class 1A playoffs.
But winning his 101st game will have to wait until next year, as the Raiders’ season ended abruptly with a 53-15 loss to Forreston in the second round on Saturday.
“We battled as hard as we could,” said Deuble, whose squad finished 9-2 overall. “You have to acknowledge they are a pretty good football team. We didn’t execute some things as well as we wanted to and paid the price for it.”
Forreston (10-1) ran over and around the Raiders, rushing for 427 yards and eight touchdowns. Hunter Hake (21 carries, 151 yards) scored four touchdowns to lead the Cardinals.
The Cardinals’ defense shut down the middle of the field, forcing Raiders quarterback Steve Smith to throw 42 passes in all. He completed 21 for 139 yards, and most were outside screens to Zach March (12 receptions, 86 yards, TD).
“We did a little more passing than we wanted to do,” Deuble said. “They were killing us up front. We couldn’t handle them on the line to run the ball.”
Junior running back Ayo Okesanya could muster 93 yards on 16 carries.
“(Forreston) has a big defensive line,” said Okesanya. “It was tough for me to go against them. I was forced to go outside.”
North Shore Country Day went 8-1 to finish runner-upe behind undefeated Mooseheart in the Northeastern Athletic Conference. Last year, the Raiders were 5-4.
“If you look at records, it was successful year,” Deuble said. “I never had a bad year at this school. The kids we get back will be put on our winter program. We’ll make a couple of adjustments and keep working. We told them to keep their heads up. We had a great year.”
Recap
Forreston (10-1) scored on its first possession, marching 64 yards. Hake registered his first touchdown on a 19-yard run 2:11 into the game.
Okesanya brought the Raiders back on an 8-yard run to tie the score at 7-7. However, Hake answered 17 seconds later with a 51-yard TD run to give the Cardinals a 13-7 lead after one quarter.
Hake and Felix Romero (4 carries, 71 yards) scored in the second quarter on respective runs of 19 and 20 yards, giving Forreston a 26-7 halftime lead.
“We did our thing,” said Cardinals coach Dennis Diduch. “We didn’t do anything special. They were trying to overcompensate, but they were mismatched by size. They were trying to guess what side we were going, and we took advantage of that. We had a pretty good feeling that our two inside guys (Tanner Bronkema and Torey Smice) in the four-man front would be able to eat up the interior. That was our game plan.
The Cardinals gained 427 yards on the ground. Quarterback Brett Carlson needed to throw only two passes, completing one for 24 yards.
“Our lineman just took care of business,” said Cardinals running back Adam Akins (7 carries, 132 yards) “We tried to hang on to the ball as much as we could, but big plays just kept happening.”
The Cardinals advanced to play host Dakota in the quarterfinals.
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