GRANITE CITY – Edwardsville’s football team has done pretty much all they could do throughout the regular season.
Now all the Tigers can do is wait to see where the IHSA will send them.
EHS finished off an unbeaten season (9-0 overall, 7-0 in the Southwestern Conference) as they ran out to a 42-0 halftime lead and defeated Granite City 49-0 at Granite City’s Memorial Stadium Friday night. The Tigers will learn who their first-round opponent will be when the IHSA announces the pairings in all eight classes for the 42nd IHSA Football Championship Saturday night; the tournament begins next weekend.
The Tigers got an outstanding performance from backup quarterback Brenden Dickmann, who tossed four touchdown passes – two each to Chrys Colley and Nathan Kolesa – in a 7-of-10, 12
4-yard game. Dickmann has been the starter since Riley Jones suffered a right knee injury at midseason and had to undergo surgery to repair damage in the meniscus cartilage.
“It was tough to run the ball on them,” said Tiger coach Matt Martin, “especially inside, so by how they were defending us, it opened up some passing zones, so we took advantage of it.
“I was proud of the kids; they protected well, they caught the ball and threw it well.”
One of the Tigers’ touchdowns came on a blocked punt in the second term; defensive end Desmond Chapple beat a blocker and got his hands on a Warrior punt, which A.J. Epenesa scooped up and ran in for a 27-yard touchdown just 32 seconds after Kolesa had scored on a 34-yard pass play.
“We’ve been working on that with him and he finally got one,” Martin said. “He just missed a couple earlier in the year, so he got that one.”
Edwardsville’s other two touchdown came from Kendell Davis, a 25-yard run late in the first half to invoke the second-half runnng-clock rule, then opened the second half with an 84-yard kickoff return for a score to extend the EHS lead.
So now the Tigers wait for the IHSA’s announcement Saturday night of where the Tigers will go and who their first-round opponent will be. “We’ve controlled what we can control so far, so we’ll see who we’re going to play. The competition’s only going to get better.”
When asked if he thought the Tigers would get a first-round home game, Martin said “(at) 9-0, we should get a home game.”
The class placement and pairing for the Tigers will come in an IHSA announcement during a show announcing the brackets for all eight classes; the show, starting at 8 p.m., will be streamed from Comcast SportsNet Chicago at the IHSA web site, www.ihsa.org, and also posted to the IHSA web site. The Class 7A pairings will be announced at 9:10 p.m., the Class 8A pairings at 9:20 p.m.
