This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

CN100 Game of the Week preview: Football - Oak Forest vs. Lemont

LEMONT – After reaching the Class 6A semifinals the past two seasons, and posting six straight seasons of 10 or more wins, Lemont coach Eric Michaelsen knows the Indians have a huge game coming up Friday.

“It’s a real important game,” Michaelsen said. “If our hope is to get to the playoffs and win conference – that starts this week.”

Lemont sits at 1-2 as it prepares to host 2-1 Oak Forest in its South Suburban Blue opener. Oak Forest opened the conference slate last week with a 28-21 win over T.F. South. CN100, The Comcast Network, will air the game at Noon and 4 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 21, and at 7 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 23. You can also find the game throughout Chicagoland with Xfinity On Demand.

Find out what's happening in Lemontwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Lemont played a South Suburban crossover last week and lost 28-14 to highly-touted Richards, the team the Indians sent packing in the second round of the playoffs last week. Despite the loss, there were positives for Lemont, particularly on the defensive side of the ball.

Led by inside linebacker Drew Hayes, defensive back Anthony Berta and lineman Andrew Miller, the Indians sacked dynamic Richards quarterback Hasan Muhammad-Rogers five times last week.

Find out what's happening in Lemontwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“We’re getting better from week-to-week, but we have a ways to go,” Michaelsen said. “We have to cut down on the mistakes we’ve made. (Last week’s loss showed us) that we’re good enough to compete with lots of teams and we’re not good enough to win while we make a lot of mistakes. Early on, it was turnovers. Now it’s penalties, mental mistakes, not lining up in the right place, missed blocks.”

Offensively, dual-threat quarterback Chris Thompson leads the way for Lemont. The famed offensive lines that Michaelsen has put together in his time at Lemont include several Division I talents, such as current LSU center Ethan Pocic and Bowling Green’s Tim McAuliffe. This year’s group is led by Connor Melvin.

“We’re not very experienced up there,” Michaelsen said. “The kids that we have, I can’t complain about. They’re working hard. The guys on the offensive line, they know the kids that are playing in college and the ones that did play in college that have come back to work with them. We’ve had some good ones and it’s nice to see them back helping out.”

Oak Forest has built a program similar in success to Lemont’s over the past 13 seasons. The Bengals have reached the playoffs in each of those seasons, going 10-2 last year. The Bengals run an option offense similar to Navy, which requires discipline defensively. Quarterback Nick Ciufia is one of the best around running that offense. Fullback is a key position in an option offense, and Matt Barry is thriving in that role thus far this season.

“They’re a really well-coached team,” Michaelsen said. “They do a nice job of finding weaknesses and exploiting them. They have some really skilled players. You have to be disciplined. The thing that worries us is that you have to play rules football. If one kid doesn’t do his job, it’s always a concern.”

- Paul Johnson, CN100 Correspondent

Stay up to date on all of CN100’s games this season by visiting our website, or follow Game of the Week on Facebook and Twitter to see where our crew will be next. When the games are done, tune into to see the best in Chicagoland prep sports each week with CN100 Sports Weekly. You can also find video clips and highlights with Sports Weekly on YouTube.






We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?