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Warren braces for test at Libertyville

At Warren, taking care of the football is important, important enough to get its own saying.

“We say that ‘ball security is job security,'” Warren coach Bryan McNulty said. “We preach ‘ball security' every day. If you want to play, you've got to take care of the ball.”

Taking care of the ball will be of the utmost importance on Friday at Libertyville, where first place in the rigorous North Suburban Conference Lake Division will be on the line.

Warren (4-2, 4-0), which is riding a four-game winning streak that includes a 30-27 victory last week over defending Class 8A state champion Stevenson, takes on undefeated Libertyville (6-0, 4-0) in the Daily Herald/Chicago Sun-Times game of the week. Kick-off is at 7:30 p.m.

Warren, which had trouble taking care of the ball during its 0-2 start, faces a Libertyville defense that is averaging 2 forced turnovers a game. The Wildcats, who have also already beaten Stevenson, are often capitalizing by converting those turnovers into points.

“We were turning the ball over the first couple of weeks, but we got that out of our system,” McNulty said. “Our tendency now is to not turn the ball over. We've gotten a lot better at that. That Libertyville defense is as good as we've seen and they're good at forcing turnovers.

“But we're a pretty good offensive team now. And we work on taking care of the ball every day.”

Last week, the Libertyville defense, led by opportunistic senior linebacker Riley Buncic, forced 3 Lake Zurich fumbles, two of which came early and set the tone. The Wildcats wound up getting a 41-21 win.

“That's been a huge factor for us, getting those turnovers,” Libertyville coach Mike Jones said. “We knew we'd be good on offense this year, but we just weren't sure how good we'd be on defense. A big key for us has turned out to be how well the defense has played, and a lot of that comes down to the turnovers.

“You kind of get what you coach, and every day, in every situation with our defensive guys, we're not only focusing on tackling technique and reads, we're also preaching to ‘get the ball out.' We want our guys to finish the play by going after the ball. What our kids are working on in practice is what we're seeing (come to fruition) in games and I think that's exciting for them.”

Of course, there is plenty of excitement on the other side of the ball for Libertyville. Quarterback Riley Lees, a Northwestern recruit, is one of the most dynamic players in the Chicago area.

While running and scrambling is his specialty (he ran for 266 yards and long touchdown runs of 80, 61 and 78 yards against Stevenson two weeks ago), Lees is also dangerous with the pass. Against Lake Zurich last week, Lees completed 16-of-26 passes for 223 yards and 3 touchdowns.

“A lot has to do with what the defense gives him,” Jones said of Lees. “We were given running opportunities in previous games and he took advantage. Lake Zurich was really looking to stop Riley in the run game. He worked really hard during the off-season on the passing game and we saw what he could do. It really came together for him against Lake Zurich.”

Henry Schmidt (6 catches for 100 yards against Lake Zurich), Cam Shaffer (6 catches, 70 yards) and Tim Calamari are the targets Lees looks to most in the passing game.

Likewise, Warren is equally diverse at the wideout position, and will sometimes use five receivers in its sets.

Nick Marcinkus, Jalin Tolbert and Micah Jones get the most looks from quarterback Kyle Debevec, a senior who was inserted into the starting spot to shake up the offense after the Blue Devils' 0-2 start. Warren had scored just 16 points over its first two games.

“We feel like the kids rally around Kyle. He's charismatic and he leads our offense and the wide receivers are close with him. They make plays for him,” McNulty said. “It's kind of a weird dynamic of our team but it's made Kyle a very good quarterback for us.”

Last week against Stevenson, Debevec completed 12-of-19 passes for 166 yards and a touchdown. Jones had 5 catches.

“Last year, we did a lot of isolation for Caleb Reams (now a freshman tight end at the University of Illinois),” McNulty said. “Now, we can have anywhere from two to five receivers out on any play. We're kind of all over the place. We're very versatile, which makes us difficult to defend at times.”

And that doesn't even take into account Warren's dangerous running game. Senior Darrius Crump is one of the most elusive running backs in the conference. He's coming off a 156-yard, 2-touchdown effort against Stevenson last week and is averaging more than 100 rushing yards per game.

“He's the best runner we've seen so far,” Jones said of Crump. “He doesn't go down easy. He's got good vision. He will be a big challenge for our defense.”

Crump came up big in Warren's 43-26 win over Libertyville last season in Gurnee. He rolled up 222 yards and 2 touchdowns on 21 carries. One of his touchdown runs went for 50 yards.

“They dominated us in the second half last year,” Jones said of Warren. “Our youth showed with some bad-decision making. But we're older and much more experienced now. We're a senior-dominated group and we handle (all the ups and downs) really well now.”

Warren is the younger team now. But the Blue Devils are confident after four straight wins.

“It feels good. The kids have rallied around what we're doing,” McNulty said. “They've bought in. We had two tough losses early (against Lyons and New Trier), but we've gotten so much better. We're battle-tested and we're doing a good job of focusing on the moment.”

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