Perryville’s defensive unit stepped up in a big way to help the second-seeded Pirates (7-3) cruise through the opening round of the Class 4, District 1 playoffs with a 39-14 victory over seventh-seeded Windsor (4- 6) on Friday at Pirate Stadium in Perryville.
“We really challenged them this week going into this game,” said Perryville coach Brent Roth. “Against an offense like this, one of our philosophies for defense is to bend, don’t break, don’t give up the big play. We did that against [Herculaneum] and we ended up losing that game. Our challenge tonight was, ‘Let’s be more aggressive. Any yards is too much.’ Our goal was to stop them from zero. We let them know, it’s not going to happen every time, but any yards is just too much, so we were a little more aggressive. Guys came up, and we’re hitting hard. The defense did a good job for us.”
Leading the way for the Pirates, who held the Owls to one touchdown in each half on 333 yards of total offense, was senior linebacker Drew Leuckel, who finished with 18 tackles, including 4 solo stops. Right behind him was sophomore Adrian Mendoza, who had 13 tackles — 7 solo — and a forced fumble, while junior Dawson Wolk had 6 tackles, 2 forced fumbles and a fumble recovery. Freshman Lucas Buchheit had 6 tackles and an interception.
“First off, you’ve got to start with the freshman, Lucas Buchheit,” Roth said. “He’s a physical football player. He’s our backup quarterback, our JV quarterback. He’s a very physical football player, and he’s got height, which some of our other secondary members don’t have. We wanted to kind of get him mixed in the game this week, and then he comes away with an interception. Dawson Wolk has been a turnover machine for us on defense.”
As for Leuckel, who started the season as a defensive end, Roth was similarly complimentary.
“Drew is probably a better defensive end than he is a linebacker,” Roth said. “That’s where he played last year, and that’s where we started him out this year. Then, when we lost Cyler Myers at the beginning of the season, teams just started running away from Drew. Our move was to put him in at middle linebacker, and now you can’t run away from him. He’s still learning the position, but he’s just so fast and he’s big and he’s strong and he just chases things down. You can’t run away from him.”
On the offensive side, Perryville was led by senior quarterback Kayd Luckey and senior running back Barrett Wheeler. Wheeler carried 15 times for 156 yards and 4 touchdowns, while Luckey completed 11-of-12passing attempts for 130 yards and 2 touchdowns, and ran 5 times for 47 yards and another touchdown. The Pirates proved very efficient, finishing with 39 points on a total of just 346 yards of offense.
“We still kind of shot ourselves in the foot a little bit too much tonight with the penalties,” Roth said. “We had a couple of holding calls — I guess most of them were holding — and then we had the turnover, which was just kind of a mental lapse. Overall, the O-line played well. Barrett Wheeler had another huge night. Windsor’s run defense was pretty tough. We had to make some adjustments on the fly. Our base blocking schemes weren’t working, so, on the fly, we’re trying to coach it up and figure out things that worked. Sometimes it didn’t exactly work, and Barrett just kind of made something out of nothing. Kayd had a good night, and Drew had a big touchdown pass down the middle. “Overall, it was a good offensive performance, but it wasn't great by my standards.”
Leuckel finished with 2 catches for 47 yards and 2 touchdowns, while sophomore Xzyavier Wilson had 4 catches for 59 yards and freshman Joshua Gremaud had 5 catches for 24 yards.
Up next for the Pirates is a second-round matchup with sixth-seeded North County (5-5), which defeated DeSoto (5-5) 21-6 in Friday’s opening round. Perryville lost 31-14 to DeSoto in Week 2.
Kickoff for Friday’s game is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Pirate Stadium.
