Hyatt Timosciek comes up big for Lockport

BRADLEY - A Bradley-Bourbonnais touchdown with 6:03 to play in Friday night SouthWest Suburban Conference crossover game against Lockport awoke a sleeping giant.

Literally.

6-foot-6 tight end Hyatt Timosciek snared receptions of six and 22 yards, before breaking to the outside and hauling in a Brady Pfeiffer pass and powering his way in from 37 yards out to Lockport a go-ahead score and after a defensive stand a 23-22 win over an upset seeking Bradley-Bourbonnais team.

“I’d been telling them all game, I’m going to fake block and go,” Timosciek said. “And they kept saying, we’ll save it. We’ll save it.”

Lockport (3-0) couldn’t afford to save it any longer.

And Timosciek couldn’t wait for the opportunity.

“I knew we had to score, so that meant I was probably going to get the ball more and I was more than ready for that,” Timosciek said.

Bradley-Bourbonnais (1-2) appeared to place the dagger when Boilermaker quarterback Ethan Kohl lofted a pass in the direction of their own big tight end, Matthew Allen. Allen out-positioned a smaller Lockport defensive back and broke free for a sprint down the sideline and a 63-yard score. A 2-point conversion, also to Allen, gave Bradley a 22-16 lead.

But Lockport’s answer was swift and decisive. Pfieffer completed four consecutive passes and in less than a minute had the equalizer. Nate Blazewski added the extra point and Lockport had reclaimed the lead at 23-22.

“This was good for us,” Lockport coach George Czart said. “It was good to be in a game where we were challenged and had to respond. They were kind of comfortable the whole time for the first two games and it was nice to see how we responded to when we weren’t quite so comfortable.”

The Porters were downright uncomfortable when the Boilermakers took the opening possession of the second half and drove the length of the field and Neal May capped a drive with a 5-yard touchdown run. It gave the Boilermakers a 14-3 lead and what most logically thought would be a momentum swing in Bradley’s favor.

The exact opposite seemed to happen. Lockport responded with a spark it hadn’t shown in the first half, matching down the field swiftly and capping its best offensive drive to that point with a 17-yard touchdown run from Aidan Preciado.

That whittled the Bradley lead down to 14-10. And three plays later the Boilermaker lead vanished entirely when Danny Stevens stepped in front of an errant pass and rambled 27 yards in for a score. Stevens, a reserve, was inserted at halftime in the hopes of shaking up some things on the defensive side of the ball.

“I knew that the defense had to make a big play and make something happen,” Stevens said. “I saw the ball was coming high and I kind of knew that it was going to come to me. I was ready to go. I had a feeling I was going to go in eventually.”

Even though Bradley was able to rebound from the mishap and reclaim the lead, Timosciek pointed directly to Stevens interception as to what turned the tide.

“The whole game switched on that,” Timosciek said. “That was absolutely huge.”

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