WW South breaks out of funk with win

Updated: September 23, 2011 11:36PM

Falling victim to perhaps the toughest schedule in the state just four games into the season, Wheaton Warrenville South was looking for anything Friday night to snap out of its funk.

Leave it to the person who has provided the only sense of consistency it has had in the season’s early going to help lead the way.

Two weeks after his three second-half touchdowns against West Aurora got the Tigers their first win of the season, senior tailback Dan Vitale put them on his back again.

Vitale’s 82-yard jaunt down the left sideline with just eight minutes left in the third quarter proved to be the eventual game-winning score as Wheaton Warrenville South recorded a much-needed 14-7 victory over Naperville Central.

“It’s a team sport. That offensive line, I’m not going to take anything away from them,” Vitale said. “All my runs so far (this season) have been because of them. They make the holes. I’ll get through the secondary, but they’ve been making all the holes for me.

“It’s all on them. They’ve been doing a great job. They’ve been stepping up (in) the second halves. We’ve been doing great that day.”

Thanks to 180 yards on 21 carries, the Northwestern-bound running back put his subpar performance in the Tigers’ 17-14 loss at Naperville North last week behind him, when he managed only 39 yards on 15 carries.

While Vitale turned the page and got back to his usual stout self, Naperville Central senior running back Matt Randolph struggled for the majority of the night.

The Tigers’ defense did a nice job bottling him up after giving up a pair of back-to-back long runs on the opening drive of the game to Randolph.

Randolph, who came into the game with 702 rushing yards and seven touchdowns on the season, finished the night with 60 yards on 19 carries, marking the first time he has been held under 100 yards this season.

“The world’s been telling us we’re not as good as in past years, but we know in our hearts we’re good,” Wheaton Warrenville South senior defensive end Jack Lipinsky said. “Just a couple plays have been keeping us from those wins. I think we definitely got the heart for it and (Friday night), we brought the execution.”

Suffering its eighth straight defeat to Wheaton Warrenville South, the lone score for Naperville Central (3-2, 2-1 DuPage Valley) came courtesy of a third-quarter, five-yard touchdown run on a fourth down from senior quarterback Ian Lewandowski that capped a 10-play, 80-yard drive, an immediate response to Vitale’s 82-yard touchdown run that gave the Tigers a 14-0 advantage.

Averaging just 330 yards a game through their first four games, the Redhawks were held to 195 total yards, with just 104 of them coming on the ground----141 less than their rushing average coming into Friday night.

“They won the battle of the trenches. Their defensive front was better than our offensive front (Friday night),” Naperville Central coach Mike Stine said. “I give them credit. They took us away from what we wanted to do and they won the battle up front and they won the game.”

A 14-yard touchdown pass from Tigers’ sophomore quarterback Ryan Graham to Brady Banda late in the first quarter proved to be the game’s only scoring in a tight first half.

Graham’s TD pass to Banda followed a sequence where senior quarterbacks from both teams fumbled.

Deep in Redhawks’ territory in the first, senior quarterback Thaddeus Armstrong lost the ball while attempting to hand it off to Dan Vitale, but Lewandowski proceeded to give it right back to Wheaton Warrenville South at the Redhawks’ 15-yard line.

Two plays later, Wheaton Warrenville South (2-3, 2-1 DuPage Valley) was in the end zone, marking the first time all season that it had broken on top first.

“We needed to win a game. We needed to prove it to ourselves that we can win a game,” Tigers’ coach Ron Muhitch said. And we needed to prove it to ourselves that we can take on a good opponent and beat them. That’s a good opponent and the kids played very, very hard.”

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