Down five, Kaneland had the ball and 81 yards to go for a victory.

Quarterback Jalen Carter led the Knights past midfield, but a pass to Carter Grabowski didn’t pick up enough on fourth down and Belvidere North escaped a Class 5A second-round game with a 30-25 victory on Friday night in Belvidere.

“I was 100% confident in both myself and my teammates,” Carter said. “It [stinks] there’s a tip play [on third down], then the last play on offense, I just led Carter a little too much. If I put it on him I think we would have picked up the first down.”

The drive for the Knights (8-3) started at their 19. A pair of runs by Carter and a screen from Carter to Grabowski placed them at the Belvidere North 44. But two incompletions brought up fourth-and-4.

Carter found Grabowski on the screen again, but he went out of bounds just as he was turning upfield and lunging for the first.

“If the sideline was 3 inches further in, I think we pick up that first down and we were going to score,” Kaneland coach Michael Thorgesen said. “It was just a couple inches out of bounds when he stepped out. He played hard. Everybody played hard.”

Kaneland took a 25-24 lead earlier in the fourth after a 10-play, 66-yard drive ended with a 1-yard run by Carter. Thorgesen elected to go for two and the lead with 3:41 left.

Belvidere North had scored 17 straight before the Knights’ touchdown, with both touchdowns coming on long runs, something the Knights limited early on in building a 17-3 lead.

Thorgesen went for the onside kick, but it went less than 10 yards and Belvidere North started its drive on the Kaneland 42. Three plays later, quarterback Andrew Bucci went 32 yards up the right side for a score on his longest run of the night. The Blue Thunder (11-0) missed the two-point conversion.

Given the chunk plays the Blue Thunder were rolling off in the second half, Thorgesen said it was worth rolling the dice on the onside attempt.

“We thought they were scoring really easy and were just going to milk the clock,” Thorgesen said. “We dialed it up, it was there, it just didn’t go 10 yards. But they scored, they would have scored, so I think it worked out fine either way. They weren’t really driving, they were chunking. So whether they got it at the 50 or the 35, 15 yards of field position didn’t make much of a difference in my head.”

Ben Bucher had a 45-yard run in the third quarter to make it 17-10, and Erick Roman’s 47-yard run at the end of the third made it 17-17.

After one play over 20 yards in the first half, the Blue Thunder had five plays of over 20 in the second half.

“They kind of did a good job of taking away our perimeter in the first half,” Belvidere North coach Jeff Beck said. “We kind of expected that so we were going to between the tackles. We had two drives where we went 60-plus yards and didn’t get in the end zone. We needed a big play, went back to the perimeter and changed the blocking a little and we were able to pop a couple.”

Kaneland built its lead to 17-3 when Carter took the first play of the second half 76 yards up the right side.

But Belvidere scored on the next drive, converting two fourth downs before Bucher’s big run.

“I think if we got them off the field on defense it might have been a different story,” Thorgesen said. “But you can’t look back. That’s a close game. If you play it 10 times I think we go 5-5.”

Carter finished with 191 rushing yards and two scores. He also passed for 165 yards.

The Knights built their lead late in the first half. First the defense came up with a fourth down stop of the Blue Thunder at the Kaneland 8.

The offense took over with 39.5 seconds left. After a 23-yard run by Grabowski, his biggest of the game to that point, Carter completed three passes in a row, two to Brady Brown, to move the ball down to the Belvidere North 5 with 6.6 seconds left.

Carter couldn’t find Brown, and the Knights settled for a 22-yard field goal by Noah McKittrick, pushing the lead to 10-3 at the break.

Each team had prime opportunities to score on their first drives, but each one stalled out due to self-inflicted mistakes. The Blue Thunder marched down to the Kaneland 11, mostly behind Zavian McElroy. But a chop block turned a third-and-5 into a third-and-21 from the 27. Jack Parker put a big tackle on Bucci, and the field goal attempt by Jojo Pina fell short.

Kaneland answered with a fast start on its own drive when Carter picked up 38 yards on third-and-6. But with the ball at the Blue Thunder 27, he fumbled on the next play.

The Kaneland defense bent but didn’t break in the second quarter. Belvidere North quickly drove to the Kaneland 7, but Brady Valentini sacked Bucci on third down. Pina made the 31-yard field goal for the 3-0 lead.

The Knights answered on the next drive, converting three third downs to set up a 10-yard pass from Carter to Brown and a 7-3 lead with 3:18 left.

“We had an amazing year,” Carter said. “This is definitely my favorite team. We’re all super close and it just feels like a family. Practice every day was fun because we were able to have fun but also lock in. It was a great experience.”

https://www.shawlocal.com/friday-night-drive/2025/11/08/huge-game-by-jalen-carter-not-enough-as-kaneland-rally-falls-short-in-playoff-loss-to-belvidere-north/