If you were at the New Ulm-Albert Lea football game Friday night, you saw a game that the Eagles — who fell 17-14 on a rare 42-yard field goal — should have won.

After a Zach Hubbard 60-yard kickoff return, New Ulm took a 6-0 lead.

A late second quarter fumble in the Tigers red zone that cost the Eagles a touchdown eventually turned out to be the difference as New Ulm was poised to take a 13-7 lead.

“We have to clean up the turnovers,” New Ulm head coach Derek Lieser said. “We have to find a way to take care of the football — we need to find a way to win that [turnover] battle.

“We threw an interception and then we had that fumble going in. We moved the ball effectively but we just did not make enough plays when push came to shove.”

Both the Tigers and the Eagles each had two turnovers in the game.

Albert Lea ran 64 offensive plays in the game compared to 54 for the Eagles but the biggest eight plays of the game came after the Tigers blocked a New Ulm 21-yard field goal attempt and then drove deep enough for a game-winning 42-yard field goal.

“We felt that [field-goal attempt] was our best option,” Lieser said. “We gave a shot to a kid that is a captain — he is a backup kicker for us — and a lot of our starting kickers are unfortunately hurt. We then had to get a stop on defense — they made a couple of nice plays on offense.”

CHARGERS SHOW

IMPROVEMENT

Minnesota Valley Lutheran head football coach Jim Buboltz said that despite a 28-7 loss to Pipestone Area Friday, his team has improved.

“We definitely have gotten some things figured out on offensive side,” he said. “But now the next step is for us to finish — we ran the ball at will [Friday] and got inside the 10 four times and scored once.”

Buboltz felt that the Chargers failure in the red zone come down to failure to execute.

“Our linemen have to block further and longer, so that is something that we have to work on more — I don’t know if we got down there and felt that is was good enough. We will find a way controlling the ball like we did with the run game and not being able to get points out of that is hard and wears on the psyche a little bit.”

Buboltz felt that defensively his team struggled.

“They threw for three touchdowns — I thought that our run defense was fine at times,” Buboltz said. “We are growing, but we need a win.”

We are at the first half of the season so the big thing is to understand that there is plenty of season and plays left and if we can grow that much between Week 2 and Week 3, I can imagine how much we can grow yet this season.”

COUGARS HANDLE GREYHOUNDS

Cathedral head football coach Denny Lux said that Cedar Mountain played well on defense.

“And their quarterback [Carson Schiller] threw some fantastic passes,” Lux said. “He kept drives going — he dropped some balls in behind our linebackers and corners. He was the biggest difference in the game.”

Lux said that the Cougars came out and played a solid game in the 36-6 win.

“They scored on their first possession of the game and it seemed like it was tough for our guys to rebound from that,” Lux said.

Lux said that defensively his players were in the right spots.

“But we did not tackle well,” he said.”They gained a lot of yards after contact with their running backs. Their runners were similar to Red Rock’s, but we did not tackle well and maybe part of that was hesitation on our part.”

Lux said that offensively his team got drives started and got first downs.

“But we had a hard time sustaining them so it is my job to figure out what we have to do,” Lux said. “We seem to have a tough time blocking horizontally as far as blocking left and right and keeping the defensive line at bay, so we may need to get more vertical with our blocks and with our running backs. And field position was big — I don’t know if they punted all night.”

He felt that perhaps his teams youth may have shown up.

“Just the swing of emotions and trying to keep our guys with the same emotons that Cedar Mountian had,” Lux said. “They were coming off of a two tough losses against two tough teams — they were hungry and when they scored on that first touchdown their enegry got really huge. We had a hard time responding to that energy.

“Part of that is that it has to come from experienced players and the bulk of our guys do not have that experience. This is Game 3 now, so they understand the speed and this is a different type of game as far as the energy level.”