Prospect quarterback Brad Vierneisel says that things “got a little cloudy” during the biggest play of the game Thursday in Park Ridge.

Vierneisel was scrambling with no good options and then running back Gavin Flanagan popped into view.

“A kid knocked me out of bounds at the start [of the play],” Flanagan said. “I remembered coach telling me to always keep going with the play. So I made sure I got back in bounds. I saw the linebacker and he’s late coming over so I know I have to get downfield.

“And then the next thing I see is the ball coming right at me and I was like ‘oh my gosh I’m gonna score a touchdown.’ And I ran in and got a touchdown. It was really exciting.”

It was thrilling, but it only pulled the No. 12 Knights within one point of No. 8 Maine South. Vierneisel had to find some more magic on the two-point conversion.

He did, leaping into the end zone to salvage another play that didn’t quite go to plan. Prospect’s defense held off Maine South for the final 44 seconds to secure a 42-41 win.

“This is a defining moment for our program,” Vierneisel said.

The junior quarterback was 24-for-42 passing for 379 yards. He threw four touchdowns and two interceptions and rushed for a touchdown.

“With all the blood pumping my arm feels fine now but I’m sure it is going to be sore tomorrow,” Vierneisel said.

Most of Prospect’s offensive fireworks came without star receiver Frank Covey. The Northwestern recruit didn’t return after injuring his ankle on an 83-yard touchdown pass at the end of the first quarter.

“We had to come together after that,” Flanagan said. “[Sebastian Wildhard] stepped up and scored two touchdowns in a row and we thought we had them.”

Wildhart had six receptions for 103 yards and two touchdowns and Jake Parisi caught eight passes for 72 yards.

“I couldn’t be prouder of Brad and the way he led us down the field at the end of the game,” Prospect coach Dan DeBoeuf said. “He played great the whole game, especially with losing Frank in the first quarter.”

Prospect (4-0) led 34-20 at halftime. Maine South’s defense opened the scoring in the third quarter. Emmet Wolf deflected a pass into the air while pressuring Vierneisel and Brady Marques caught it and scampered 10 yards for a touchdown.

Then Maine South quarterback Jack DeFilippis led consecutive scoring drives, capping them with touchdown passes to Michael Dellumo and Evan Agosto. That turned the halftime deficit into a 41-34 lead for the Hawks.

“It came down to who would make the crucial stop and we didn’t get it at the end of the game,” Maine South coach Dave Inserra said. “Credit to our guys. We were down 14 at half and didn’t stop.”

DeFilippis was 17-for-36 passing for 175 yards and three touchdowns. Dellumo had 22 carries for 129 yards and a touchdown.

Prospect fans stormed the field after the victory. The Knights, a Class 7A school, have a proud football history, but it was a statement win.

“Maine South is a great team with great players all around,” Flanagan said. “It means so much to us that we are finally up there and we can compete with the best.”

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The Chicago Police Board on Thursday voted unanimously to fire an officer who shot and killed an apparently unarmed man during a 2018 foot chase on the South Side.

In a 7-0 vote, the board found Officer Sheldon Thrasher guilty of using deadly force without justification in the June 6, 2018, incident, when Thrasher fatally shot Maurice Granton Jr. in the back as he climbed a fence.

The chase began after officers monitoring a police POD camera allegedly observed Granton, 24, and others engage in “narcotics transactions” under the Green Line tracks at 47th Street and Prairie Avenue.

Thrasher’s use of force “was not necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm from an imminent threat posed to him or another person,” according to the dismissal recommendation Supt. David Brown submitted to the Chicago Police Board last August.

Police body-cam video of the shooting appeared to show Granton without a gun as he grabbed the fence with both hands, the Sun-Times previously reported.

As Granton laid on the ground bleeding, onlookers gathered and began yelling at police.

“You see your homie right there? You see your homie shot … Get back, get back,” Thrasher allegedly told people in the crowd, according to police records.

Brown found that Thrasher violated police rules that prohibit “engaging in an unjustified verbal or physical altercation with any person” and “incompetency or inefficiency in the performance of duty” when he yelled back, the documents show.

The superintendent also said Thrasher “failed to activate his body worn camera in timely manner in that he waited until after he had discharged his weapon to do so,” the documents show.

Antonio Romanucci, a lawyer for the Granton family, has said he agreed with Brown’s recommendation.

Granton’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit a month after the shooting alleging Granton didn’t pose an imminent threat to police. In July, the City Council’s Finance Committee approved a $4.25 million settlement to the family.

Contributing: Madeline Kenney

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The Cubs made history Wednesday when they completed a three-game sweep against the Mets, who have the second-best record in the National League.

They became the first team in MLB history to enter a series of at least three games with 30-plus fewer wins than their opponent and sweep the series on the road, winning each game by at least three runs, according to Stats Perform.

The next question becomes, when will they get to the point where sweeping a top team isn’t shocking? The answer to that question hinges on two factors: the health of the farm system and the club’s approach to the offseason.

When asked late last month about parallels to 2014, president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said he’d considered the comparison.

“I’d love to finish strong that way,” he said. “… It definitely gave us confidence that what we were building on top of was starting to be real.”

In 2014, the Cubs went 28-27 in the last two months of the season. Anthony Rizzo recalled earlier this season, when the Cubs played him the Yankees in New York, a feeling that the club wouldn’t be selling at the deadline again.

Kyle Hendricks, who debuted a few weeks before the 2014 trade deadline, is the only current Cubs who was on the roster that season.

“Rizz, he had had some years, and he had seen he knew where the team was going,” Hendricks told the Sun-Times last month. “He was kind of a part of all these conversations. … Signing [Jon Lester,] when that happened in the offseason, now you knew. I hadn’t maybe thought about it, but I knew, OK, this is a team now that is all in. We’re going somewhere. We’re winning.”

That’s where this offseason comes in as a potential turning point.

In other ways, the 2014 comparison doesn’t quite line up. Even entering the season, MLB.comranked Javy B?ez (No. 7) and Kris Bryant (No. 9) among MLB’s Top 10 prospects. Now, the Cubs’ highest-ranked prospect is outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong, who comes in at No. 31 in MLB Pipeline’s rankings.

“I remember it was pretty apparent in 2014, given where those prospects were, that we would have kind of a whole team of prospects on the field in 2015,” Hoyer said. “And I think that is less so [right now,] but that’s what we’re building towards. And that’s what we want to create.

“My vision is always sort of the same in the sense of, we knew that second half of ’14 what our team would look like on the field for a long time. And I certainly want to get to that point where we’re young and athletic and talented at every position.”

Pitching depth is a strength in the upper levels of the farm system – something the last rebuild infamously lacked. Whereas the lower levels are full of young hitting talent.

Three of the Cubs’ top four position-player prospects, according to MLB Pipeline, are in Single-A or lower, with Kevin Alc?ntara and Cristian Hern?ndez joining Crow-Armstrong. All three are 20 or younger.

The Cubs do, however, have more hitters coming soon. Outfielder Brennen Davis, the Cubs’ No. 2 prospect, first baseman Matt Mervis and catcher Miguel Amaya headline the group of players the Cubs plan to send to the Arizona Fall League – along with pitchers Riley Martin, Bailey Horn, Zac Leigh and Sheldon Reed.

Davis and Amaya will get extra at-bats to supplement their injury-shortened seasons. Mervis gets the chance to carry the approach and swing that have sent him shooting up the farm system ranks this season into the fall. Hehit his 33rd home run of the season on Wednesday, putting him one behind minor-league leader Hunter Goodman, a Rockies prospect.

“I barely played my first two years in college, and my senior year got cut short,” Mervis said in a conversation with the Sun-Times in Des Moines, Iowa on Thursday. “So, that’s almost three full years of at-bats that I haven’t gotten compared to a lot of other guys who go into college or get drafted out of high school and play right away. So, just building the workload of playing a full season, extending into November where playoff baseball is played.”

The sheer number of Rule 5-eligible prospects who the Cubs need to protect by putting them on the 40-man roster make it unlikely that Mervis will debut this year.

With so many team-building factors still unknown, it’s hard to pinpoint a date for the next time the Cubs will sincerely compete for a championship.

So, how does the feeling in the second half of this season compare to 2014?

“I feel very close to that,” Hendricks said. “… The maturation and the development of all these young guys, especially the young pitchers, that’s what’s really going to set us up for this next wave and this next core. And I think it could happen a lot quicker than what they were initially expecting, possibly.”

ROCKIES AT CUBS

Friday: Germ?n M?rquez (8-10, 5.25) vs. Marcus Stroman (3-7, 3.91 ERA), 1:20 p.m., Marquee, 670-AM/1200-AM

Saturday: .Jos? Ure?a (3-6, 5.81) vs. Wade Miley (1-0, 2.89), 1:20 p.m., Marquee, 670-AM/1200-AM

Sunday: Ryan Feltner (2-8, 6.12) vs. Javier Assad (1-1, 2.53), 1:20 p.m., Marquee, 670-AM/1200-AM

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Even though Cairo Santos had missed an extra point in a deluge of rain five minutes earlier, the Bears didn’t seriously consider going for a two-point conversion after scoring their final touchdown Sunday.

“At that point in the game we tried to just go for it, kick for one,” special teams coordinator Richard Hightower said Thursday.

Santos then missed his second extra point of the game. Hightower, though, expressed confidence in his placekicker — both Sunday and going forward.

“Guys drop balls, guys miss extra points– things happen,” he said. “I mean, God bless him if he can make them in that type of condition, all of them….

“I mean I got all the confidence in the world in Cairo, and everybody here does. And he had a really great day [Wednesday]. Looking forward to seeing him kick again. I know he’s fired up about it.”

Santos missed exactly one extra point in each of the last three seasons before missing two Sunday. Hightower said the new Soldier Field turf held up fine, but the rain made kicking difficult.

“It’s tough to snap the ball in that condition,” he said. “It’s tougher to catch a ball in that condition and it’s actually the hardest to kick the ball in that condition because when it’s raining like that, the balls become heavier, they don’t travel as well …. It’s just a difficult situation to kick in.”

Injury report

One day after practicing for the first time since suffering a hamstring injury during the preseason, rookie receiver Velus Jones was held out of Thursday’s practice. He missed all three practices last week, as well as the season opener.

Fullback Khari Blasingame missed practice because of a personal matter. Tackle Riley Reiff returned to practice as a full participant after being limited Wednesday.

Two Packers starting offensive linemen — tackle David Bakhtiari (knee) and guard Jon Runyan (concussion) — did not practice Thursday. Bakhtiari, who tore his ACL on Dec. 31, 2020, was expected to be on a day-on, day-off practice schedule, and had practiced on Wednesday.

Allen Lazard, who is nominally the Packers’ No. 1 wide receiver, was limited for the second-straight day. He hasn’t played this season after hurting his ankle when a lineman stepped on it in practice two weeks ago. Packers tight end Marcedes Lewis did not practice Thursday but was merely resting.

This and that

o Hightower referred to punter Trenton Gill using a towel to dry the turf Sunday, which prompted a 15-yard flag, a “mistake” that “we all learned from.”

oOffensive coordinator Luke Getsy tried to take blame for a near-interception by quarterback Justin Fields, saying that Dante Pettis — and not Equanimeous St. Brown — should have been on the field.

“I should’ve had the personnel different,” Getsy said. “‘EQ’ hadn’t practiced that route at all, so the timing and the rhythm, I put that on me.”

Tashaun Gipson, the former Bears safety, knocked the pass down and could have caught it; two plays later, Fields threw a 51-yard touchdown pass to Pettis.

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CLEVELAND — After watching the White Sox’ previous three games from a suite in Oakland and Chicago, manager Tony La Russa did not make the trip for the Sox’ one-game stop in Cleveland Thursday afternoon for an important game against the Guardians.

La Russa missed his 16th game as he awaits medical clearance from his cardiologist to return to managing, and it remained uncertain if he would return to the dugout for any of the Sox’ last 18 games.

While there is respect and affection for the 77-year-old manager as well as concern for his health in the White Sox clubhouse, there are also strong feelings that allowing bench coach Miguel Cairo to continue as acting manager through the season would be best for all involved.

“One hundred percent,” one clubhouse source told the Sun-Times.

Strong sentiment to keep Cairo at the helm is known to be shared in important pockets of the front office as well. After all, the Sox are 11-5 under Cairo and playing with a level of urgency the decision makers and fans have waited for all season.

La Russa, meanwhile, has stayed in contact with Cairo and Sox coaches during his absence and in Oakland and Chicago he spent time in the clubhouse and his office. Of the three games La Russa watched in person, the Sox lost two. Cairo showed his respect for La Russa in the managing manager’s office after the Sox’ 8-2 win Thursday, not seating himself in the manager’s chair while talking to media.

“El Capitan’s,” he said.

Sox fans on social media have overwhelmingly voiced a low approval rating of La Russa, however, and were heard in the same vein when it became known La Russa didn’t travel with the team to Cleveland and isn’t expected to be in Detroit for the team’s weekend series as well.

Robert out with sore wrist

In a last-minute decision, Luis Robert was left off the lineup card because of a sore left wrist, an injury that could be problematic during the final two and a half weeks of the season.

Robert said he was OK to play but admitted the wrist can worsen later in games, and Cairo said he “didn’t want to risk anything.”

AJ Pollock started in center field.

“He wants to be there for the team. We’re all fighting to make it to our goal, the playoffs,” Cairo said. “But if he’s sore, sometimes the desire to play is going to make you do something or want to play with that kind of pain. Right now we’re going to go with the guys who are healthy, just for today.”

Andrus’ comment

Elvis Andrus’ comment Wednesday that the Guardians might “crumble” after their current hot streak got more attention from Cleveland media than the Guardians. President of baseball operations Chris Antonetti said he heard about Andrus’ comment but dismissed it as “outside noise.”

This and that

Lance Lynn’s post All-Star break ERA of 2.14 trails only Justin Verlander (1.69) in the AL among pitchers with 60 innings pitched.

*Liam Hendriks warmed up lightly during the seventh inning, wearing jersey 21 on Roberto Clemente Day. Hendriks and Jake Diekman are nominees for the Clemente Award for humanitarian service.

*Cleveland righty Aaron Civale is slated to start the Sox Tuesday, pending a successful outing at his Triple-A rehab assignment appearance Thursday.

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