Is Pleasant Valley the best chance from Eastern Iowa to win a Class 5A state football title?

IOWA CITY — The eastern half’s best hope to finally get that championship breakthrough in Iowa’s largest class of prep football appears to be a team that employs a unique offense.

The veer triple option, flexbone, or whatever you want to call it, didn’t used to be different. But when it comes to Class 5A these days, you just don’t see it.

PV’s offensive attack features a quarterback under center (imagine that) and one running back up close behind him. There are wingbacks lined up just off the line of scrimmage on either side, one of which sometimes goes into motion.

The QB can hand it to his running back, plunge the interior or perimeter himself, or pitch it to his wingback. This ain’t shotgun, RPO stuff.

But it’s winning football.

“We’re a unique offense, and I think it’s tough for opponents to re-enact what we do in practice,” Pleasant Valley quarterback Caden McDermott said Friday night, after his third-ranked team smacked No. 7 Iowa City High, 51-21, at Bates Field. “It’s different on Friday nights. It’s full speed, it’s our guys versus their guys. We’ve been practicing it since freshman year.”

Pleasant Valley (7-0) has multiple players who can do damage, as evidenced by six different guys scoring touchdowns in this game. One of those was Makhi Wilson, who had substantial rushing yardage but who actually scored on a 95-yard kickoff return.

McDermott had two 1-yard touchdown runs and two TD passes. He threw it just six times (completing three), which is about PV’s average attempts per game.

The Spartans had 410 yards, 348 on the ground.

“I just kind of think what we do and how we play, the style of play we use is tough to prepare for a lot of times,” said Pleasant Valley Coach Rusty VanWetzinga. “It might be kind of an old-school approach, I don’t know. I learned something a long time ago when I played for Bob Reade at Augustana. You play great defense and control the clock, you’re going to win a lot of football games.”

Des Moines surburban schools have won the last 12 biggest-school state championships in Iowa.

“I’d like to emulate a lot of the things they do as we continue to build this thing. Really their detail and discipline,” said City High Coach Mitchell Moore. “They’ve got a tough coach and a tough staff. This is me, but when you play a team like (West Des Moines) Dowling and you play a team like this, I sure respect these guys a whole hell of a lot more in how they do things. I think our kids respect the heck out of their kids. It is a tough opponent. You know you’ve got to strap it up to play.”

City High (4-3) played without quarterback Drew Larson, who suffered broken ribs in an ATV accident earlier in the week. Moore said he wasn’t sure if Larson would miss the rest of the season.

Quinton Tran spent all of last season rotating with Larson by series, though Larson had gotten the bulk of the QB work this season because of his fine play and partially because Tran has been nursing an ankle injury. Tran kept his team in it much of the way by completing 23 of 36 passes for 278 yards and two touchdowns.

Top running back Ronnie Major also has a high-ankle sprain and didn’t play in the second half.

“Quinton’s on a 60-percent ankle. He’s not playing tonight if we had Drew. The toughness he showed was everything we knew he was,” Moore said. “You lose Drew on Wednesday, and that’s about as demoralizing as you can get. In my opinion, I’m not sure anyone is playing a higher level than Drew in this state. He’s playing at as high a level as (Iowa Hawkeyes recruit) Ben Kueter. You lose him, that was a blow early in the week. But that’s no excuse, I thought PV played a great football game.”

PV built a 21-0 lead on a Rusty VanWetzinga 15-yard touchdown run with 6:52 left in the first half, with Kueter’s second-effort, 1-yard TD plunge capping off a City High drive that made it a two-score game. After Wilson’s kickoff bomb, City High went on another throw-oriented march that concluded with an 11-yard scoring pass from Tran to Carsen Newton.

Tran shed a blitzing PV defender, rolled a bit and hit Newton over the middle on a nice throw. Pleasant Valley took the second-half kickoff and drove for a TD: a ground-oriented march, through an 18-yard scoring pass from McDermott to Colin LeMoine.

A field goal toward the end of the third quarter and back-to-back touchdowns in the fourth made it a 51-14 game and got the continuous clock rolling with 6:39 remaining. It stopped a couple minutes later, when City High’s Akili Mattox took a short pass from Tran and turned it into a 42-yard touchdown.

“There’s still football left in this team. There is,” Moore said. “If we want to be a playoff football team, we have to win our next two games. I just told our team we are going into a playoff game next week against Davenport West. So buckle up, every game is playoffs.”

Pleasant Valley 51, Iowa City High 21

Pleasant Valley 14 14 10 13-51

Iowa City High 0 14 0 7-21

TEAM STATISTICS

First Downs - Pleasant Valley 21, Iowa City High 15. Rushing Yards - Pleasant Valley 53-348, Iowa City High 22-84. Passing Yards - Pleasant Valley: 3-6-0-62. Iowa City High 23-36-1-278. Total Yards - Pleasant Valley 410, Iowa City High 362. Punts-Average - Pleasant Valley 1-34.0, Iowa City High 3-26.0. Penalties-Yards - Pleasant Valley 2-20, Iowa City High 8-65. Fumbles-Lost - Pleasant Valley 1-0. Iowa City High 1-0.

INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS

Rushing - PV: Caden McDermott 16-63, Makhi Wilson 4-55, Izaac Harvey 7-49, Dakota Drieling 5-48, Tyge Lyon 9-46, Ryan Doyle 6-43, Rusty VanWetzinga 4-35, David Gorsline 2-9. ICH: Ronnie Major 5-55, Ben Kueter 6-27, Quinton Tran 9-8, Sam Rew 9-8, Team 1-(minus) 14.

Passing - PV: Caden McDermott 3-6-0-62. ICH: Quinton Tran 23-36-1-278.

Receiving - PV: Ryan Doyle 1-27, Colin LeMoine 1-18, James Thiel 1-17. ICH: Akili Mattox 7-134, Carsen Newton 8-80, Ben Kueter 3-43, Oliver Kniss 2-9, Sam Rew 1-7, Ronnie Major 2-5.

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