Barrington able to pull away from Hersey

Some say the Barrington Broncos are a second-half football team, and that's all fine and good.

There was little evidence to the contrary in Friday's 32-15 Mid-Suburban League crossover victory over Hersey.

But you know what?

The Broncos' defensive front wants to change that mindset.

"A lot of things to fix …" senior lineman David Danhauer said following the victory that pushed the Broncos to 3-0 this season. "Mental mistakes … keeping the same attitude the whole half.

"We always say we're a second half team. I think we should be a full-game team."

The Broncos held a relatively slim 18-13 lead at the half, after finding themselves behind 7-6 at the end of a quarter. That made for an interesting halftime discussion with head coach Joe Sanchez … who did most of the discussing.

"Basically he told us we needed to clean up our mental mistakes," Barrington senior lineman Jason Harris said. "That's what was killing us. We were doing our job on first and second down, but we were blowing it after that. We needed to clean it up mentally and play our type of defense, which is swarming to the ball and getting after it."

That's exactly what the defense, led up front by Harris, Danhauer, senior Kyle Meckert and junior Cooper Van Kampen, did in the second half. Hersey had eight drives, none of which resulted in a scoring play, with two ending on a Barrington interception of Huskies quarterback Eric Portenlanger. The second was returned by senior Scotty Miller 40 yards for a touchdown down the Hersey sideline with 4:24 to play that set the final score.

Hersey, which fell to 1-2, went just 7 yards on its ensuing drive before Harris corralled Portenlanger, causing a fumble that Danhauer recovered.

Sanchez couldn't have been more pleased with his front four despite the fact that, for the third week in a row, Mother Nature was a sourpuss and delivered lousy weather - a steady, driving rain.

"Our defensive line we know is a strength of our team, we've got a lot of guys rotating in and out, and keeping guys fresh," Sanchez said. "Certainly, they help us set the tone, and when you've got guys like that that can create pressure without having to worry about blitzing, that allows us to play in coverage.

"We didn't come out and do the things we wanted right away, but you tip your hat to (Hersey), they came out and were ready to go," he said. "It was a tough night for both teams, dealing with pretty sloppy conditions. Once again, our whole attitude this week was to just to find a way to persevere. These are the kind of nights where you have to find a way to get it done, and that's what we did tonight."

Despite a swarming Barrington defense and crummy weather, Portenlanger still had a decent night, completing 18-of-31 passes for 187 yards and two touchdowns, hitting five different receivers in the process. His favorite target was Cole Monckton, who caught 7 passes for 85 yards.

But Barrington's defense limited the Huskies to just 43 total rushing yards on 28 attempts.

"I told our guys, we're going to have to play balanced defense," said Hersey coach Joe Pardun. "I thought in the second half that we were playing a physical football game, but I told the guys we've got to click on all three cylinders at the same time, and we haven't done that yet."

Of course, it didn't help that Hersey gave up a 75-yard kickoff return to Barrington senior Seamus Moran to open the second half, which gave the Broncos, and especially the defense, some wiggle room.

Barrington junior quarterback Johnny Davidson was sold, completing 12-of-20 passes for 109 yards and two touchdowns, to senior Mitchell Pfeiffer, both in the first half. Davidson also rushed 16 times for 54 yards.

Senior receiver Dylan Bingham caught 3 passes for 38 yards, while Miller caught 4 for 35 yards.