The last time Minooka football didn’t make the playoffs, the Chicago Cubs were World Champions. This year, the Cubs didn’t make the playoffs, so I guess the Indians did.
They did so in dominant fashion, with their best record since going undefeated in the 2019 regular season. Their 7-2 record earned them the No. 15 seed in class 8A with hopes of making a deep trip in the playoffs. The first stop is defending their home turf against the 18th seeded Carl Sandburg Eagles Friday.
The Eagles are no cake-walk though. In the regular season they put up a 6-3 campaign in the Southwest Suburban – Blue conference that has had a representative in the 8A IHSA championship four times out of the last five years, and won it three out of the four times.
Head coach Troy McAllister’s team is headlined by its offense, especially its well above average passing game.
According to Maxpreps, Sandburg is above the national high school average in passing yards, passing touchdowns, completion percentage, and QBR.
Their air attack is led by junior quarterback Anthony Shelton who is coming off a 4-passing touchdown game against Stagg and put up over 1,800 passing yards, a 20:3 TD:INT ratio, and a 125.3 QBR campaign up to that.
Shelton’s No. 1 target has been fellow junior Charlie Snoreck who has averaged over 100 receiving yards per game and put up 979 receiving yards and nine touchdowns leading up to their week nine game against Stagg.
Another receiver who has put up points on the board is senior Sean Weisenberger who had seven touchdowns in seven games.
Though they’re not an air raid offense. They actually run a very heavy RPO scheme. And although their running game isn’t as successful comparatively, the Eagles still go to it 59% of the time.
With their young backfield, which contains sophomore Luke Basioraka and freshman Quinn Durkin, they had averaged 149.5 rushing yards per game through the first eight games of the season. With most of those yards coming from their lead rusher Basiorka, who put up over 1,000 yards on the season and leading up to their game against Stagg was averaging 128.3 yards per game and had 6 touchdowns.
Both these parts of the dual threat offense are anchored by a strong offensive line, which is headlined by two future D1 athletes, junior OT Matt Marek and IOL Zack Barrett. All-in-all the offense has managed to score no less than 14 points every game and throughout the entire regular season averaged 27.8 points per game.
It’s a different story for McAllister’s defense this season. They have given up 28.9 points per game on average this season, which gives the team a -1.1 point differential. Though it is partially skewed by a pair of 42-point games, they haven’t given up fewer then 20 points in a game this season except to the 2-7 Oak Forest Bengals. One key player on their defense is Jaden Weaver, who is the No. 1 2026 defensive end in Illinois according to Prep Redzone.
Overall this looks like a perfect matchup for the Indians to exploit, due to them having a reverse set of strengths. Completely unlike Sandburg’s defense, Minooka hasn’t given up more than 17 points in a game, and averaged 10.9. However, their offense isn’t as big of a weakness as Sandburg’s defense. They have averaged 30.9 points per game this season, but they’ve struggled against playoff caliber defenses and have only averaged 14.8 points per game against them.
Although the Eagles’ defense has struggled at times this season, they’re still a playoff defense and how the Indians offense handles them will be a major key to the game.
The Indians’ offense does have momentum going for them after competing against three straight playoff teams. In their first matchup of these three games, they played Plainfield North where they put up a touchdown in every quarter of play accumulating a final score of 27. That was good enough to claim the title of the most points scored on the Tigers’ defense all season.
Then they were home against Oswego, where the passing game struggled but there were bright spots. These were the rushing games with senior Joey Partridge going for 101 yards and a touchdown while his backup sophomore Chase Nurczyk put up just shy of 50 yards.
And the biggest standout was the only scorer of the final half for either team junior kicker Cole Spivey, who had his best game of the season with a field goal in both quarters of the final quarters.
Finally, they finished it off in West Aurora with a 21-point game that saw the passing offense rejuvenated. Senior quarterback Nate Maul threw for 162 yards and a touchdown while senior tight end Carson Jacoby was the No. 1 pass catcher with 64 yards and a touchdown.
The ground game didn’t slow down either. The running back committee put up a similar game as the previous, which has been common for their run-heavy offense that has leaned on the run 63% of the time.
The strong defense saw continued success throughout these three games as well, only allowing 20 total points through them all. This includes only allowing scores in only one quarter in each respective game.
The only way that the Eagles will have a chance to overcome this stifling defense is through the air. Though the Indians have only allowed 122.3 passing yards per game and an average of a 48.8 completion percentage, their run defense has only allowed 88 rushing yards per game with an average of 3.3 yards per carry. Going to the pass isn’t a problem for a Sandburg offense that has found success with it. However, Minooka’s passing defense isn’t a weakness, it’s just a consolation prize.
Minooka’s first round playoff game starts at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 28, at Minooka.
