Downers Grove North looked like it was capable of giving Oak Park and River Forest a real battle Friday night.
Thanks to Kamal Bey, we’ll never know.
The host Trojans were driving for the tying score midway through the second quarter and had a first down at the OPRF 11-yard line when Trevor Hills dropped a pitch-out. Bey swooped in, picked the ball up, fought off a tackle and raced 80 yards the other way for a touchdown. That gave the Huskies a 14-0 lead and they proceeded to roll to a 35-3 West Suburban Conference Silver Division victory at Carstens Field in Downers Grove.
“[Hills] came by and I saw him bobble the ball,” Bey said. “He dropped it and I knew that I could make a play right here, so I ran over, scooped it up with my hands, he tried to tackle me and I took off running down the field. I was surprised I got down there before anybody.”
No one else was. The OPRF coaching staff has become used to seeing the 5-7, 160-pound junior linebacker make terrific plays.
“He is a special, special athlete,” OPRF coach John Hoerster said. “I’d love to say it was great coaching, but he’s a special athlete. He can do so much and when that ball was on the ground, no coach was surprised because he just makes freak plays like that in practice all week.”
While Bey’s touchdown was far from the only great play executed by the Huskies (4-0, 2-0), it was the one that changed the complexion of the game.
OPRF had taken a 7-0 lead just 1:38 into the game when Lloyd Yates fired a 26-yard touchdown pass to Ke’Juan Ratcliff on a 4th-and-8 play, but the Trojans (1-3, 0-2) stopped the Huskies on downs on their next two possessions.
“It’s a huge momentum shift,” Hoerster said. “They were moving the ball down the field and we were trying to make adjustments.
“They’ve got a tough group. They run their offense really well and they’ve got a big stud of a quarterback who’s going to be pretty special at the next level. Being able to flip it like that, that was huge because we were shooting ourselves in the foot offensively with penalties and mistakes and the defense came up big.”
Such a play, Bey said, gets a team fired up.
“Yeah, it really does,” Bey said. “That play [the game] was really close. It was 7-0. We didn’t feel like it should be this close and that play really got everybody boosted up and ready to go again.”
The Trojans nearly scored two plays later when they caught the Huskies napping on a wheel play. Wide receiver Lawrence Smith fired a pass over everybody to Ken Bucher, who was open 15 yards behind the defense, but Bucher dropped it.
After the teams traded punts, the Huskies took two defensive timeouts to get the ball back on their own 31 with 1:17 left in the half. Three plays and 21 seconds later they had extended the lead to 21-0 on Yates’s 39-yard touchdown pass to Dallis Flowers.
Downers North took the second half kickoff and marched 70 yards in 13 plays but had to settle for a 26-yard field goal by Hills.
OPRF scored on its next two possessions, with Yates firing a 21-yard scoring strike to Ratcliff and Sam Pochyly running for a 15-yard score with 21 seconds to go in the third quarter.
Yates completed 10-of-14 passes for 160 yards and three touchdowns. Ratcliff (62 yards) and Bey (57 yards) each had three catches.
“We tell the offense all the time that defensive coordinators have to make a decision on what they’re going to take away,” Hoerster said. “We had a really hard time running the football. They did a great job taking away the run so we had to be able to throw the football.
“Lloyd made some good decisions. Our receivers made some good plays, so I was really proud of them.”
Hoerster was also proud of his defense, which did a good job of limiting Downers North’s tricky veer option attack. The Trojans had just one rushing play of more than nine yards and finished with 147 on 39 carries (3.8 average) with dual-threat 6-7 quarterback Dave Edwards, a Wisconsin recruit, carrying 14 times for 56 yards and completing just 7-of-19 passes for 84 yards and an interception.
“The keys to stopping them on offense was just watching the crackback,” Bey said. “Our cornerbacks [were] telling us [when] we [are] blitzing the gaps and early on our defensive line was just getting a push off the ball.”
“We tackled well,” Hoerster said. “Kamal Bey was lights out tonight. Our defensive ends, Allen Stallings and Jelani Onigbinde, did a really nice job with their responsibilities and you have to play responsible defense against an offense like this.”