Talen Tate, DeKalb defense power win over Plainfield South

DeKALB — Talen Tate didn’t just turn DeKalb’s 20-7 win on Friday against Plainfield South into a track meet. He managed to run two events on the same scoring play.

[ Photos: Plainfield South vs. DeKalb ]

The senior running back and track standout hurdled a fallen Cougar at the line of scrimmage, then kept the pace ahead of pursuing defender Colin Pickett for a 69-yard touchdown run. It was the second of three first-half scores and what turned out to be the only three touchdowns in the game.

“It was great, but it still wasn’t DeKalb football,” Tate said after the win, which came after the Barbs lost 42-7 to Sycamore in the opener. “We only played one half of football. We can build and get better on that. But we have a lot of energy going into Sandburg and that’s what we’re focused on.”

We’re pretty much just living on home runs now. We need to be able to put 10, 12, 14 play drives together. So we’ll get there. But we saw a lot of nice things tonight.”

—  Derek Schneeman, DeKalb football

Tate’s was far from the only big play for the Barbs (1-1) on the day on both sides of the ball. DeKalb sacked Plainfield South quarterback Connor Folliard eight times in the game, including three by junior Pierre Cathina and two each for Travis Moore and Justin O’Neal.

“It was huge for them,” DeKalb coach Derek Schneeman said. “Last week was pretty demoralizing for a lot of reasons. For those kids to show the resiliency they did and bounce back, huge for our confidence moving forward. We know there’s no weeks off with our schedule.”

Quarterback Cole Latimer also had a pair of first-half touchdown bombs. The first came on the Barbs’ third play from scrimmage when he found Davon Grant on a 10-yard out pattern. Grant took a step back to make the first defender miss, then used a juke move to get past two more defenders to an open field and a 7-0 lead.

After Tate’s run made it 14-0 on the last play of the first quarter, Latimer tossed a screen to Tate who took it 88 yards for a score and a 20-0 lead. The Barbs were facing a first-and-22 after a chop block, and Derrion Straughter had a key downfield block to spring Tate for the final half of his run.

“We’re pretty much just living on home runs now,” Schneeman said. “We need to be able to put 10, 12, 14-play drives together. So we’ll get there. But we saw a lot of nice things tonight.”

Plainfield South ran eight more plays in the first half. Three were sacks, plus Grant had an interception he returned about 50 yards on a deep pass attempt by Falliard.

The Cougars made things interesting at the end of the game, scoring a touchdown when Folliard found Andreas Amos II for an 8-yard touchdown pass with 1:35 left.

Plainfield South recovered the onside kick, but the Barbs defense held, including Moore’s second sack of the game.

“Obviously, on defense we found some adjustments at halftime that kind of helped us out with the way they were playing against us,” first-year Plainfield South coach Jake Brosman said. “Offensively, we made some more adjustments that cleaned up some things for us and helped us drive a little bit.”

Folliard finished the game 19 of 31 for 240 yards, a touchdown and three interceptions. Amos had seven catches for 94 yards as Folliard found six different receivers. The Cougars finished with 223 total yards of offense, with the run game including the sacks accounting for negative-17 yards.

Latimer finished 7 of 18 for 197 yards and an interception, completing three passes for 94 yards to Grant. Tate carried the ball 13 times for 97 yards.

After 254 yards in the first half, the Barbs managed 108 yards in the second half. The big plays of the first half disappeared, except for a 20-yard run by Mariyan Dudley and a 30-yard pass from Latimer to Grant.

“DeKalb is a heck of a team, they have a lot of athletes running around out there,” Brosman said. “They made some big plays.”