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Whiting sharp on offense, defense in win over South Central
Updated: September 12, 2011 7:20PM
WHITING — Sophomore quarterback A.J. Veloz admits he has a go-to receiver in clutch situations.
But the Whiting quarterback is starting to get flashes of confidence in some of his other wideouts as the season progresses into September.
The whole receiver corps put on quite a show as Veloz tossed four touchdown passes and recorded 199 yards on 11-of-20 passing in a 40-20 Greater South Shore Conference win over South Central at Ray P. Gallivan Stadium on Friday night.
Junior Justin Jendreas — Veloz’ main target — finished with a game-high 113 yards on seven catches and one touchdown in the win, while Keagon Rooke (two touchdowns) and Rudy Wanek also added scores for the Oilers (2-2, 1-1).
“(Justin) is pretty much my go-to guy but I’m confident in all (my receivers),” Veloz said. “This is a sectional opponent so we had to perform because we could be seeing them again. This was a complete team game.”
The defense played a major role in Whiting’s win, intercepting three passes and giving the offense several short-field opportunities which they capitalized on.
The game didn’t start so pretty, though.
Whiting fumbled its very first snap of the game. The Oilers also gave up a safety in the first minutes of the game because of a bad snap.
The defense was there to pick up the slack.
“We just had to keep our heads up,” said senior Javi Guerra, who made the team’s first and last interceptions. “I love defense. I don’t care about (playing) offense. I just want to do my job and hopefully the offense will do theirs.”
The offense finally got rolling after Guerra intercepted a South Central pass and returned it to the 29-yard line. Ethan Young, who finished with 116 yards, capped the drive with a 23-yard touchdown run to put the Oilers ahead, 6-2.
Whiting was off and running from there. Rooke scored his first touchdown of the night with 10:51 left in the first quarter, then Young scored again with 7:12 left in the second quarter and Alvaro Castelon added the extra point to give his team a 20-2 lead. Wanek’s 26-yard touchdown reception put the Oilers ahead 27-2 with 2:11 left in the first half.
South Central coach Mel Hay said his defense let him down on Friday night.
“Whiting had a really good gameplan. They executed it a lot better than we did,” he said. “We really blew some assignments defensively, we turned the ball over and they just outplayed us tonight. We gave up 40 points and 20 of them were off turnovers.”
Ethan Biggs finished with 115 yards on 25 carries but didn’t reach the end zone for the Satellites. Backup quarterback Garrett Walter ran in a touchdown and threw a TD filling in for the injured Kane Klimczak.
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