Wildcats Whacked Again: Scouts Win 23-17, Advance to Quarterfinals
The fall of 2024 is the year the Illinois High School Association celebrates the 50th season of the state playoffs.
In that half-century of time, Lake Forest and Libertyville have met every season in the regular season. But never in the playoffs.
On an overcast yet relatively mild Saturday afternoon, just when we thought it impossible these two regional rivals — separated by just a few miles — could top their Week 8 game for drama, they did, the Scouts winning 23-17, both sides treating the capacity crowd at Libertyville to a rare sequel better than the original.
The ball was on the Lake Forest 2-yard line and offensive coordinator Phil DeWald faced a dilemma.
With the score tied at 17 and 1:41 remaining in regulation, he could play conservatively, punt the ball back to the Wildcats, trust the defense and hope the game got to overtime.
“We’re backed up and I was like, ‘if we throw, it’s risky, I mean we are in safety territory, right?’” senior Marty Hippel said.
After a no gain running play to Hippel on first down, everyone in the stadium thought the Scouts would make the safe call.
Except DeWald.
“What have we got to lose?” DeWald said, the team’s primary offensive play caller since 2010.
On second and 10, Lake Forest lined up in a 2x2 formation, Hippel offset to quarterback Danny Van Camp’s right. Senior wide receiver Charlie Markee was flanked out wide left, the No. 1 receiver closest to the sideline. Libertyville’s corner played off-man coverage. Markee released towards the outside, forcing the corner to lean away, creating enough leverage and space for an inside-breaking slant route.
Van Camp hit Markee in stride and when the safety took a bad angle towards Markee, it was off to the races. When Libertyville’s defenders caught up to Markee, the play had gained 47 yards and the Scouts were in business at their own 49-yard line.
With the clock ticking towards a minute left, DeWald decided he’d take two shots downfield. He only needed one.
A five-yard illegal procedure backed the Scouts up five yards. On the next play, sophomore Jack Burger was lined up with man coverage out wide to the right. Van Camp gave a subtle pump, followed by Burger, who first broke off the line inside, breaking back outside (a “sluggo” route). It froze the defender for just a moment, but enough for Burger to clear and have enough space to corral the pass for a 35-yard gain. Forget overtime. The Scouts were in business to win the game.
“When I heard the three and go, I knew that Danny was going to look for me,” Burger said. “I saw the corner crash down on my inside cut and I knew it was coming to me.”
Burger wasn’t done.
After a time out, there were 39 seconds left, Lake Forest on the Wildcats’ 19-yard line. The Scouts came out in a 3x1 formation, Burger wide left, the No. 1 receiver on the field side. Lined up just outside the numbers, the Wildcat defender showed inside leverage, a look to take away an in-breaking route. But Burger fought off the contact, and caught a slant in traffic, broke the tackle of the initial defender, only to be tripped up by the safety at the three-yard line.
Van Camp spiked the first and goal play.
“I didn’t want to waste our last time out,” DeWald said. “I was playing for the field goal and I told Marty to center the ball.”
DeWald is referencing the next play, ran from the left hash, after the spike. An inside dive run was snuffed by the Wildcats at the 1-yard line and facing third down and the clock ticking under 10 seconds, the Scouts quickly got to the line to run the next play.
They weren’t going to settle for a field goal. They were going to win the game right there.
With 6.6 seconds on the clock, behind center Arjan Jawanda and right guard Matthew Somoza, Van Camp ran into the end zone for the go-ahead touchdown and winning score.
There wouldn’t be enough time for a Wildcats comeback. A frantic kickoff return by Libertyville went nowhere.
Lake Forest won and defeated its biggest rival in the process. If the first meeting was defined by offense, the sequel was about defense.
The seeds of the “dime” package deployed by the Scouts began the week of the Mather game.
Coaches prepared for the Rangers but had their eye on a potential rematch with the Wildcats. They knew a tweak to the scheme would be needed to slow, if not completely stop, a Libertyville offense averaging 40+ points a game.
On paper, a dime defense is not complex.
“You rush three, and put eight in coverage. It’s that simple,” Coach Spagnoli said.
But games are not won on paper. If execution were to match conception, certain players would be asked to play roles they hadn’t all season. On a team filled with terrific athletes, Hippel, a running back, and Markee, a receiver, are exceptional.
The defensive coaches, led by Spagnoli, the unit’s coordinator, were more than comfortable asking them to two-platoon Saturday.
“Markee and I had never played defense until (Saturday),” Hippel said. “I didn’t want the reason we lost to be because I wasn’t on the field. I wanted to play every snap and control what I could.”
In the game’s second series, a Libertyville offensive possession, the Wildcats faced a 3rd-and-15 from the Scouts’ 35-yard line. In came Hippel and Markee, two extra deep defenders to cover the deeper zones. Although Libertyville scored a touchdown on that first drive — they had a short field after the Scouts were stopped on a 4th-and-1 call — the three-high safety look gave Wildcats receivers less space to roam and quarterback Quinn Schambow more defenders to read.
The package paid dividends on the next Libertyville possession.
Leading 7-0 with 6:57 left in the first quarter, the Wildcats took over on their own 14-yard line. A sack by senior defensive end Finn Goodman drove Libertyville back to its 8-yard line. Facing 3rd-and-16, Markee and Hippel entered the game. Markee lined up in a free safety position, in the middle of the field, 15 yards from the line of scrimmage. When Schambow tried to force a post route to star receiver Blaise LaVista, Markee came over the top and snatched the ball out of the air, running the interception all the way back into the end zone. The pick-six and huge momentum play tied the game at seven and validated the decision to make the defensive switch up.
“We shot ourselves in the foot,” Schambow said of Wildcat errors. “There were some mistakes made by me.”
Mistakes created by a package the Wildcats struggled to adjust to.
Over the next four possessions, Libertyville compiled just four first downs. The Wildcats were out of sync, with uncharacteristic penalties and another turnover, a second Markee interception at the end of the first half. Schambow, who entered the game with 50 touchdowns and over 3,000 yards passing, threw for a pedestrian — for him — 245 yards on 31 attempts Saturday. And LaVista, he a Power 4 recruit and leading receiver in the state of Illinois heading into the game with 1,296 yards, caught 147 yards of passes Saturday. But by deploying extra defenders in the alleys and bracketing him over the top — junior Aedan Cassidy shaded over to LaVista to assist senior corner Ryan Valentincic — the Scouts avoided the multiple explosive plays from the 6-2, 190-pound LaVista that hurt them in the Week 8 match up.
Libertyville missed its second-best receiver, Stevan Gavric, out of the lineup with an injured hand. And Schambow, who the Wildcats rarely called on for designed runs in the first game, carried the ball more frequently Saturday. But when the defense needed stops, as it managed in the second half, forcing two Wildcats punts when the Scouts’ offense got bogged down, it did so by way of scheme and execution.
“We took away their timing and rerouted their outside receivers,” Scouts senior linebacker Chris Lindemann said of the dime personnel package. “The rush did the rest.”
“We played as hard as we could, as physical as we could,” senior defensive end Nate Borland said, who swapped out at nose tackle for stretches of the game. “We played relentless, which is why we held them to 17 points.”
The offense, so big play-heavy in the first meeting, was more methodical this time around.
An 80-yard, 15-play drive that began in the first quarter and eclipsed over six minutes of clock before Van Camp found junior tight end Luke Pasquesi over the middle for a nine-yard touchdown pass with 7:11 left in the second quarter. It gave the Scouts their first lead of the game, 14-10, a lead they would expand later in the quarter when senior linebacker/kicker Tim Dan nailed a 39-yard field goal to boost the points surplus to seven, 17-10, with just under two minutes left.
Leaning more on inside/outside zone runs with Hippel — who averaged 4.5 yards on 25 carries — proved to be a smart game plan. It slowed the game down and prevented less opportunities for the Libertyville big-play offense to strike. The offensive line, reshuffled again with the return of left tackle Nicholas Nassar from injury and a move of Will Frentzas to left guard, capably provided rush seams for Hippel and protected Van Camp on dropbacks.
On the final, game-clinching 98-yard drive, Van Camp had clean pockets.
“Our line blocked, Danny found the slant to (Markee), then found Burger, who made a heckuva catch,” Hippel said. “We just had to block, get to the one and punch it in with Danny.”
They did. And after a much-deserved celebration at Chiefs and elsewhere around town Saturday night, it’s on to the next opponent.
In a season thus far defined by a singular rematch, with the Libertyville win, the Scouts earn another.
Saturday at Varsity Field, Lake Forest plays Geneva. A season ago, the Vikings stomped the Scouts on their home turf, 42-7. They get another shot at the 10-1 Vikings, who won their second round game 42-28 over Burlington Central.
“It’s surreal. We wouldn’t want it any other way,” Lindemann said.
Up Next: home vs Geneva Saturday at 1 pm.
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