By Jim Bastian

Journal Sports Writer

NEW ULM — The fourth week of the high school football season locally has only the New Ulm Eagles tasting home cooking as they host Luverne Friday night at 7 p.m. at the New Ulm HIgh School field for homecoming.

New Ulm Cathedral heads west to Sleepy Eye to battle the Indians.

Minnesota Valley Lutheran has an afternoon matinee at 3 p.m. Saturday in Wabasso.

NEW ULM CATHEDRAL (1-2) AT SLEEPY EYE PUBLIC (0-3) 7 P.M. FRIDAY

New Ulm Cathedral heads into this game coming off a 29-28 overtime win over St. James Area, while Sleepy Eye is looking to rebound from a 35-8 road loss to Adrian.

New Ulm Cathedral head football coach Denny Lux said that the Indians are a team that pursues the ball very well defensively.

“They take good angles to the ball carrier and they put a lot of pressure from the inside coming up the middle with their defensive tackles and nose guard,” Lux said. “Then offensively they run out of the I-formation and they pull their guards. They ran the I-formation last year along with their double slot.

“These are things that we are going to see in our next couple of games. They played a good defensive game against us last year (an 18-8 win for Sleepy Eye) and we are watching film of that game. They are disciplined. Coach Joe Hoffmann does a good job with their defense.”

Offensively, Lux feels that the Greyhounds need to get their backfield involved in their blocking schemes.

“We need to make sure they are staying on their blocks. From tight end to tight end we are doing a pretty good job up front on our blocking schemes — we just need to get better in the backfield.”

Lux was very pleased with the play of his special teams in the 1-point overtime win against St. James.

“They did a great job,” he said. “We blocked a punt, we blocked a field goal and we made our extra points. We ran the swinging gate and got a 2-point conversion out of that. Our kickoff return has been pretty solid all year. Those things there kept us in a position to win the game.”‘

Lux said that the win last week was huge.

“We felt that we did not play a complete game starting out the season against YME and then we could not match up against Springfield’s speed. This win was big because we needed to defend our home field and assure ourselves that if we play hard the whole game we will have a chance at the end of the game to win.

“We may have some talent that is on our sideline now that we can get on the field and create some one-way players. That would be a benefit to us because when you start getting wore down and tired, you lose your focus and that takes away the confidence.”

MINNESOTA VALLEY LUTHERAN (2-1) AT WABASSO (0-3) 3 P.M. SATURDAY

MVL head football coach Jim Buboltz said that Wabasso is a young team that is excited to play.

“They are going to try and spread you out with their offense and run underneath,” he said. “They are pretty equal in run-pass, but in the big picture they try and get you spread out (defensively) and feel uncomfortable.”

Now 2-1 following a tough 13-6 loss last week to Martin County West, Buboltz said that while that loss stings, it will also be a loss that helps the Chargers focus.

“We have to learn to finish drives and finishing games,” he said. “And it is early in the year — I would rather have that kind of a loss in Week 3 rather than Week 10. We will learn from it and get better.

“Even in defeat we learned a lot and because of that we are seeing that leadership come out. They want to get better — they wanted to come back to practice this week very focused.”

Buboltz reiterated that the Chargers have a lot of weapons in their arsenal from running backs to wide receivers to linemen.

“The biggest thing was Cole (Thompson) moving to quarterback. You take a player who probably would have rewrote the receiving record books and will be a receiver in college. You ask him to make that change because he is such a special athlete.

“He does that because he is willing to sacrifice personal goals for the team. He is going to continue to get better at that spot, too.”

Buboltz also sang the praises of his team’s defense.

“Most times holding a team to 13 points gets you a win,” he said. “We have Landen (Merseth) there, with Malachi (Kohls) and then the athletes that we have on the outside. We have areas that we are going to continue to improve on but our defense is going to keep us in a lot of games.

“Our defense only gave up one first down in the first half but we only had 6 points on the board in the first half. We controlled the time of possession, but we have to put more points on the board. We have to finish.”

LUVERNE (2-1) AT NEW ULM HIGH SCHOOL (0-3) FRIDAY 7 P.M. (HOMECOMING)

New Ulm High School head football coach Derek Lieser said that the visiting Cardinals will do a number of different things to get their playmakers the ball.

“They have a couple of guys they like to move around, (Jayson Rops) will line up as a quarterback, tight end, running back or receiver,” Rieser said. “I think that they want to be a run team first but they will try and take some shots downfield. They want to run the ball first and foremost, but they will try and be explosive with the pass.”

And that concerns Lieser.

“We have shown that we are not good enough consistently defensively or offensively (being outscored 133-20 in three games). We have way too many plays where we have 10 guys doing their job and one is not. That just shows that football is such a team game. In basketball, one player can take over a game, but it is harder to do that in football because there are more players on the field.

“So right now we are trying to find ways to get all 11 guys on the field to do their jobs both on defense and offense. It is just simple things like defensively guys taking on a block with their wrong shoulder or they fill the wrong gap and leave their gap open. It has been a mix of offensive and defensive mistakes. We have a lot of young kids playing. We are not a very experienced team and we are not a senior-led team. So we go through those growing pains.”

Lieser sad that the Eagles have played three good teams in their first three games who have combined records of 7-2.

“We have been beaten by three good teams, but that does not mean that we cannot still be successful,” Lieser said. “We keep trying to grow at practice and how we correct our mistakes.”