Morris coach Alan Thorson was understandably thrilled with how his team played on both sides of the ball in Friday’s Interstate 8 Conference game against visiting Sycamore.

Morris turned four Spartans turnovers into 28 points, posted a 50-10 running-clock victory, stayed undefeated and clinched the I-8 championship.

“This was probably our best all-around game this season so far,” Thorson said, his squad now 8-0 and finished the league slate 5-0. “Our defense was really good, and they made plays to put the offense into great spots. A big key was turning those turnovers into points. I thought we had a nice balance in running and passing the ball which was good to see. I really like how we are playing right now.”

Trailing 3-0 early after a 23-yard field goal by Sycamore’s Joshua Puleo, Morris scored on all five of its first-half possessions, with quarterback Brady Varner (3-of-3, 90 passing yards; three carries, 40 yards) tossing a trio of TD passes, one each to Logan Conroy (13 yards), R.J. Kennedy (52 yards) and Anthony Smith (25 yards), to lead 35-3 at halftime.

Four of those scores came directly off a fumble recovery and three interceptions by Conroy.

“Everything in football is knowing your assignment and where you are supposed to be on every play,” said Conroy, who outjumped a receiver for one pick and grabbed deflections on the other two. “I would say all three interceptions tonight, while two were on fortunate bounces, were just me being where I was supposed to be. It seems like we’ve created a lot of turnovers this year and most of the time our offense finds a way to score touchdowns off of them.

“All week we talked about it being important defensively to slow down their running game. We wanted to hopefully put them in long third downs and passing situations. I feel like we played pretty well on defense.”

“Logan is just an athlete and beyond the interceptions, he showed that on the returns,” said Thorson of Conroy’s returns of 80 and 46 yards. “He had one of those special nights.”

Morris opened the second half with 61-yard kickoff return by Luis Loza, before Caeden Curran (nine carries, 55 yards) scored his second TD on the night on a 27-yard run with the 2-point conversion starting the continuous running clock.

“You can’t turn the ball over like we did and we just weren’t getting stops defensively,” Sycamore coach Joe Ryan said. “It was just an avalanche of things tonight. We just made too many critical errors at the wrong times and that’s what leads to a score you saw here tonight.

“Morris is a very good team, very good, and we knew our margin for error was going to be small. They took advantage of our mistakes and that is what really good teams do. They just beat us in all facets of the game tonight.”

On its first drive of the second half, Sycamore (4-4, 3-2) drove 82 yards in 16 plays, ending with a Griffin Larsen to Ben Anderson 9-yard TD pass.

Morris closed out the scoring as Smith returned the ensuing kickoff 75 yards for a score.

Kevin Lee led Sycamore’s run game with 15 carries for 87 yards, followed by Caden Ralph (10-44) and Liam Arhos (10-36). Larsen finished 8-for-15 for 83 yards, with Anderson making six catches for 72 yards.

Next week Sycamore makes the 4-plus hour drive to play at Cahokia, located just outside St. Louis, while Morris hosts Byron Center from Michigan.