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ROMEOVILLE — Something had to give.
Both Romeoville and Joliet Central entered Friday night’s Southwest Prairie East game with 0-7 records, guaranteeing that one of the teams would walk away with its first win of the season.
Romeoville used both the arm and legs of sophomore quarterback Richard Conley to take a 13-point halftime lead over the Steelmen.
Conley continued his strong play after halftime and the Spartans cruised to a 46-14 win.
Conley opened the scoring with a 20-yard touchdown run in the first quarter only to see Joliet Central answer with a 58-yard drive that ended with a 5-yard TD run by Jay’Lin Murphy that gave the Steelmen a 7-6 lead.
The Spartans had an answer of their own, and Conley hit sophomore Justin Love with a 20-yard touchdown pass early in the second quarter for a 13-7 Romeoville lead.
“It feels good to get my first varsity win,” Conley said after he ran 11 times for 131 yards and two touchdowns and completed 7-of-11 passes for 121 yards and two more scores. “Everything was clicking for the offense tonight and it was almost perfect.
“I have to give the offensive line props. They gave me a lot of time to throw, and when I ran, they kept blocking down the field.”
Joliet Central then drove into Romeoville territory, but the Spartans’ Camron Thomas intercepted a pass at his own 2-yard line. Romeoville then drove 98 yards and scored when Jesse Palomar bulled over from 2 yards out.
It was the first of two interceptions for Thomas, who also had a fumble recovery deep in the Spartans’ end of the field to thwart another scoring chance by Joliet Central.
“Our defense has been bend, but don’t break most of the year,” Romeoville coach Justin Trovato said. “We have been so close in a lot of games. We have four games that we have either lost by one score or were within one score until the final minutes, so our record is not reflective of how competitive we have been.
“Getting the takeaways tonight helped. That is something we haven’t been doing, so it was nice to see the defense get some of those tonight.”
The Steelmen took the second half kickoff and scored on a 69-yard run by Murphy, who finished with 182 yards on 25 carries. That brought Central to within 20-14.
Romeoville’s Carmeron Jurgens, though, took the short kickoff and returned it 48 yards for a touchdown to give the Spartans (1-7, 1-4) a two-score lead at 26-14. Romeoville scored again on a 1-yard run by RJ Ibarra (13 carries, 61 yards), a 5-yard pass from Conley to Ty English and a 13-yard run by Conley. Romeoville finished with nearly 300 rushing yards and 121 through the air.
“Our offensive line did a great job tonight,” Trovato said, noting the work of starters Tony Galloway, Mason Baffour, Ethan Lee, Seth Dabrowski and Devin Byers. “They really stepped up and did what we asked of them.
“We knew Joliet Central could score, so we knew our offense had to perform tonight. The kick return by Cameron Jurgens was a big turning point for us.”
Joliet Central (0-8, 0-5) fought the good fight and never showed any signs of giving up, but came up short again.
“You can’t fault the effort at all,” Central coach Thomas Hart said. “We did some good things tonight. I believe Jay’Lin Murphy went over 1,000 yards for the season, and the defense played well early. They were just on the field too much and got worn down.
“We need to work on our defense on the deep balls, and we had some guys dinged up. Our quarterback [Paul Slick] was hobbled with an ankle all night, and so was [receiver] Christian Smith. Right now, the program is like a teenager. It’s emotional, it’s going through change and mad at the world. But, we’ll get there.”