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North Central had not lost a regular-season game since Wheaton beat it in 2019. On Saturday night the Thunder did it again, and a former Wheaton soccer player kicked the winner.
No. 2 Wheaton beat No. 1 North Central 13-10 in front of 7,127 at Benedetti-Wehrli Stadium in Naperville, Ill., on the Cardinals' homecoming. Caleb Ryan made an 18-yard field goal with five seconds left after the Thunder trailed 10-2 midway through the fourth quarter. Both rankings are from the D3football.com Top 25. Wheaton is 6-0 and 4-0 in the CCIW. North Central is 4-1 and 2-1.
The win ended North Central's 53-game CCIW winning streak and its five-game run in the series, and the Little Brass Bell goes back to Wheaton for the first time since 2019. As we wrote before kickoff, these two had never met as the country's top two teams.
The first score came less than two minutes in. Rex Kroger sacked Garret Wilson on third-and-6, and the snap on North Central's punt sailed through the end zone for a safety. Wheaton led 2-0 with 13:10 left in the first quarter, and nobody scored again for 40 minutes of game clock.
Both offenses kept going for it and kept coming up short. Wheaton was 0-for-4 on fourth down. Its best first-half chance ended in the second quarter at the North Central 24, when Brad Spencer challenged a fourth-down catch and officials overturned it to an incompletion. It was 2-0 at halftime.
North Central finally broke through late in the third quarter. Wilson scrambled 23 yards on third-and-10 to extend a 14-play, 75-yard drive, and Sean Ryniec kicked a 32-yard field goal for a 3-2 lead with 3:07 left in the period.
Then the Cardinals took control. Ethan-Micah Enriquez intercepted Mark Forcucci at the North Central 18 early in the fourth, and Wilson led an 11-play, 82-yard drive. Jack Rummell caught four passes on it, the last a 14-yard touchdown with 6:43 left. North Central led 10-2.
Wheaton needed five plays to tie it. Forcucci hit Luke Crawford for 11 yards, Caleb Titherington for 26 and Sam McFadden for 25 down to the 4. Matt Crider ran it in on the next play, then ran in the two-point conversion. It was 10-10 with 3:50 left.
Wheaton got the ball back after a three-and-out and moved to the North Central 29 on Forcucci's 35-yard throw to Owen Yorke on third-and-6. The drive stalled, and a fourth-and-11 pass fell incomplete with 1:11 left.
North Central kept the ball for one play. Brett Dieter tipped Wilson's pass, and Zeke Harris caught it at the North Central 40.
"Dieter saw it coming, picked up on it, tipped it up in the air and it was a little gift from heaven to me," Harris told the Daily Herald's Paul Johnson.
On the next snap, Forcucci found Seth Kortenhoeven for 34 yards to the 6. Crider got to the 1 on first down, and Ethan Groark and Kyler Green stopped him on the next two carries. Ryan came on and made the 18-yarder. On the last play, North Central tried a hook-and-ladder, but Caleb Barclay was tackled before he could pitch it.
Ryan, a fifth-year senior, asked for a chance to join the football team this season, according to Johnson. He said his coach had given him one word to focus on for the past two weeks.
"It's calm," Ryan said. "When I'm calm, I believe that I can compete with anybody and make any field goal in any situation."
Harris, a junior linebacker, finished with 18 tackles, 6.5 tackles for loss, 1.5 sacks and the interception. The 18 tackles are the most by a Wheaton player since 2014, and the CCIW named him its Defensive Student-Athlete of the Week for the second straight week.
North Central came in averaging 458 yards a game, according to Johnson, and was held to less than half of that, with fewer than 60 rushing yards. Wilson was 12 of 22 for 129 yards with a touchdown and an interception, and Rummell caught six passes for 92 yards.
Forcucci was 18 of 33 for 272 yards with an interception and ran for a team-high 36 yards. Kortenhoeven caught five passes for 67 yards. Forcucci told Johnson that last year's 35-0 loss in Naperville helped bring him back for a fifth season.
"Especially after last year, frankly getting embarrassed the way we did, to come out here and get one back, it means a lot to us," Forcucci said. "It means a lot to this program."
Spencer was 62-2 in his fifth season before Saturday, according to Johnson, and both losses came in national championship games.
"It will be new territory for me and the coaches and the team," Spencer said. "We've been challenged like we've never been challenged before. That's the beauty of playing good teams."
The Cardinals' defense kept them in it for three quarters. Matt Janiak and Phillip Carlton Jr. had nine tackles each, and Brayden Garrigan had eight. Carlton and Bobby Medina stopped Crider for a 3-yard loss on fourth-and-1 in the first quarter, and Wheaton ran for 82 yards at less than 3 yards a carry. North Central has won 26 straight games against Elmhurst.
Wheaton is No. 1 in the D3football.com Top 25 for the first time in program history. The Thunder got 23 of 25 first-place votes and 620 points. St. John's moved up to No. 2 with one first-place vote. North Central fell to No. 3, ahead of UW-Whitewater, which got the other first-place vote, and UW-Platteville. Wheaton is the ninth program to reach No. 1 in the poll, which started in 2003.
Wheaton is the CCIW's only unbeaten team in league play, according to the conference standings. Illinois Wesleyan and Carroll are 3-1, and North Central is 2-1. Wheaton already won 28-7 at Illinois Wesleyan, and it hosts Carroll on Saturday. After that it plays at Augustana, hosts Elmhurst and finishes at Carthage on Nov. 14. North Central plays at Elmhurst on Saturday.
The CCIW champion gets an automatic bid to the Division III playoffs, and Johnson wrote that Wheaton is now in the driver's seat for both the league title and a top playoff seed. North Central still has wins over Bethel and Wartburg, now No. 15 and No. 11, for an at-large case. For now, though, the CCIW doesn't run through Naperville.
The Little Brass Bell goes back to Wheaton! No. 2 Wheaton 13, No. 1 North Central 10! #d3fb
