Riley racks up yards
Johnston passes for 343 yards, rushes for 116 yards as Hobart tops Kankakee Valley
Hobart coach Craig Osika was slightly surprised by the sheer numbers Riley Johnston produced Friday night.
Then again, Osika also knows his senior quarterback’s talent and work ethic.
Johnston accounted for five touchdowns and almost 500 yards as the visiting Brickies topped Kankakee Valley 41-17 in a Northwest Crossroads Conference game.
“Is he capable of doing that?” Osika said of Johnston. “Yeah, 100%. The way he runs and the way he throws the ball, he’s very capable of doing that.”
Johnston completed 12 of 16 passes for 343 yards and three
TDs for Hobart (4-2, 1-1), including a 65-yarder to a wide-open Marc Enslen on a nifty playaction and a 76-yard screen to Zach Vode. Johnston also had nine carries for 116 yards and two TDs against the Kougars (5-2, 1-2), with his scoring runs going for 31 yards and 11 yards.
Johnston credited his teammates.
“We have great receivers,” he said. “I know they’re going to come down with it. We have a great line. The rushing yards are up too.”
Vode, a Western Michigan recruit, was Johnston’s primary target with five catches for 204 yards.
“That’s a really good team,” Osika said of Kankakee Valley. “We saw some stuff on film we thought maybe we could take advantage of and put our guys in position to outnumber them or put our skill guys in position to make plays. We executed — that’s the biggest thing.”
K a n k a ke e Va l l e y senior quarterback Eli Carden completed 13 of 23 passes for 194 yards, including a 6-yard TD to Logan Fugett. He added 51 yards on 11 carries.
Markus Ritchie also had a strong all-around game for the Kougars. He had three catches for 88 yards, a 4-yard TD run and a 43-yard field goal.
But Hobart was sharp after a 35-24 loss to Andrean the previous week.
“It’s huge,” Osika said. “You want to see how we react to a loss. I told them when we were up, we’re in the same position as we were last week — we were up 14-0.
“You have to finish the game. It could’ve been a little smoother, but we finished it. We’re still making some mistakes we can’t make if we want to take a long run.”
Hobart has won seven straight games in the series against Kankakee Valley, including a sec
tional matchup. The Kougars last defeated the Brickies in 2014.
“We had a great week of preparation,” Johnston said. “We were looking forward to it. They’re a good opponent, and we knew we had to come out firing
on all cylinders. We improved from last week, but we have to get better.
“It gets everyone’s spirits up with the win. Obviously we didn’t want to lose last week. But we had to bounce back this week.”