By Greg Halbleib
A pair of the top three teams in the Big Twelve Conference will now meet Saturday, one of several changes to Friday’s schedule.
Anticipated storms have caused athletic directors to move up the start times of several games. Manual at Normal Community and Urbana at Bloomington are now scheduled for 6 p.m. kickoffs. Normal West (3-1, 3-1 Big Twelve) visits Peoria Stadium to face Peoria (4-0, 3-0) in a battle between two of the conference’s top offenses that is now scheduled for Saturday at 11:30 a.m. at Morton High School. The game can be heard live on WJBC.com at 11:15 a.m. by clicking here.
The featured game on the Week 5 WJBC Friday Night Extravaganza is now U-High (0-4) at Springfield Lanphier (1-3), still scheduled for a 7 p.m. start at Memorial Stadium.
“They’re probably going to be the most athletic team we play,” Normal West coach Nathan Fincham said of Peoria. “They play a unique style of defense. They’re going to be blitzing and playing man-to-man defense the entire time. So when you play a team like that, the thing that I’m telling my guys is to focus on what we do and not get into a track meet with these guys. Their whole goal is to outscore you and we need to try to make them play our game.”
Peoria has outscored its opponents 264-85 in its four wins. Normal West has more than doubled its opponents on the scoreboard 110-48.
“We’ve shown the ability to be able to move with different teams when we need to, but hopefully we’ll be able to dictate the pace,” Fincham said.
Other games covered in the Week 5 Extravaganza include Urbana (0-4, 0-3 Big Twelve) at Bloomington (2-2, 2-1) for the Purple Raiders’ Homecoming, Peoria Manual (0-4, 0-3 Big Twelve) at Normal Community (3-1, 3-0) and Central Catholic (1-3) at Monticello (3-1).
Pre-game scene setters begin at 6:05 p.m. with updates from all games every quarter hour and post-game analysis and interviews until 11 p.m. Scores can be found on the WJBC Sports Twitter feed (@SportsWJBC, #WJBCHSFB).
Week 5 schedule:
Changes:
Urbana at Bloomington, 6 p.m.
Manual at Normal Community, suspended until Sat. 11 a.m. (NCHS leads 11-6)
Heyworth at Deer Creek-Mackinaw, 6 p.m.
Fisher at Gibson City-Melvin-Sibley, 6 p.m.
IVC at Prairie Central, 6 p.m. (live WJEZ-FM 98.9 & WJEZ.com–click here to listen)
Eureka at Ridgeview-Lexington (at Colfax), 6:30 p.m.
Normal West at Peoria, 11:30 a.m. Sat. at Morton High School
Fri. 7 p.m. unless noted:
Big Twelve:
Champaign Centennial at Peoria Notre Dame, Sat. 7 p.m. at Eureka College
Peoria Richwoods at Champaign Central
Central State Eight:
Chatham Glenwood at Jacksonville
U-High at Springfield Lanphier
Sacred Heart-Griffin at Rochester
Springfield Southeast at Decatur MacArthur
Decatur Eisenhower at Springfield, Sat. 2 p.m.
Illini Prairie:
Central Catholic at Monticello
Pontiac at St. Joseph-Ogden
Rantoul at St. Thomas More
Tolono Unity at Olympia
Central Illinois:
Clinton at Tuscola
Lincoln Prairie:
Blue Ridge at Arthur-Lovington-Atwood-Hammond
Sangamon Valley:
Dwight at Watseka
Non-Conference:
El Paso-Gridley at Tremont
LeRoy at Tri-Valley
Fieldcrest at Carthage Illini West, Sat. 2 p.m.
Sports Director Greg Halbleib can be reached at [email protected].
