L-P hoping to ‘play better’ in rematch with Morris

In a little over a year, La Salle-Peru has lost to Morris three times by a combined score of 122-14.

The Cavaliers lost to Morris twice in the fall 2021 season – including 42-0 in the first round of the Class 5A playoffs – and fell to Morris 49-7 in Week 5 this fall at Howard Fellows Stadium.

L-P will have another crack at Morris this week when the Cavaliers travel to Morris for a 7 p.m. Friday kickoff in another Class 5A first-round playoff game.

“Just play better,” L-P coach Jose Medina said about the message to the team this week. “We competed for the first half. Some calls didn’t go our way. The biggest thing is just compete. We’ve preached to them they are beatable.”

In this season’s meeting, Morris took a 14-0 lead behind two rushing touchdowns from Ashton Yard before the Cavaliers pulled within 14-7 on a 38-yard TD from Brendan Boudreau to Gage Starkey.

Morris took a 21-7 lead at halftime.

On the opening drive of the second half, the Cavaliers appeared poised to pull within one score on a second-and-goal play, but L-P lost a fumble in the end zone.

From there, Morris held L-P to three three-and-outs and a lost fumble while scoring four more touchdowns to pull away.

“We can’t get negative plays,” Medina said. “I felt like in the first game we had some positive yards, then we’d have a setback with penalties and things like that that really affected us offensively. Defensively, we can’t give up big plays.”

In the first meeting, L-P managed 124 rushing yards.

Morris is allowing 13.4 points per game and have held five opponents to 10 points or less.

“We’re going to try to utilize what we have,” Medina said. “We’ll do our best to move the ball as much as we can and control the clock as much as we can.”

In last week’s 28-7 loss to Kaneland, L-P mixed up its personnel, at times putting Boudreau at receiver and Mason Lynch at quarterback.

“We’re trying to put kids in the right spots to hopefully make some plays,” Medina said. “Brendan is a good athlete. We put him at receiver and he went out and made some big plays. He made some good blocks for us as well. Mason is an athlete, so he’s going to get some reps at quarterback this week as well.”

Medina hopes the Cavalier defense can limit big plays by Morris after Morris scored on runs of 26 and 28 yards by Yard, a 33-yard run by A.J. Zweeres and a 52-yard pass from Carter Button to Zweeres.

Yard ran for 158 yards and four TDs on 24 carries in the first meeting, Zweeres caught seven passes for 87 yards and a TD and ran for 37 yards and a score and Button completed 9-of-13 passes for 113 yards and a TD.

“I think the biggest thing is holding Yard to minimal yardage and making sure we’re doing our job in the secondary to not give up big plays,” Medina said.

Morris is averaging 36.6 points per game and averaged 46 points per game in its seven wins. Morris managed only seven points combined in its two losses, which both came to undefeated teams. Morris lost 31-7 to Richmond-Burton and 28-0 to Sycamore last week.