New Ulm High School head football coach Derek Lieser said that his team’s 27-14 road loss to Belle Plaine was another game where the Eagles let a game slip away from them.

“We were up 8-7 at halftime and then scored in the third quarter to go up 14-7,” he said. “But then we gave up a couple of big plays and they came down and scored — we turned the ball over on our next possession and then two plays after the turnover they scored on a long touchdown pass to go up by 6 points late in the third quarter.”

Lieser said that the Eagles had the ball in the fourth quarter with six minutes left.

“We got the ball down inside their 20-yard line, ran a play-action pass and had a guy open, but we had one mistake in our pass protection and ended up second down and 25,” he said. “Then later we had them pinned down in on their 25-yard line and they ran a screen — we got a hand on the ball carrier behind the line of scrimmage but broke a tackle and went 75 yards for a touchdown.

“We had our chances, but we are still trying to get that monkey off of our back and trying to find ways to win. We are still young and finding out what it takes to win at the varsity level.”

Lieser said that right now there are issues on both sides of the ball that need to be cleaned up.

“Defensively it is just that we are breaking down and tackling — and we are creating some turnovers — but we need to limit the big plays,” Lieser said. “And offensively there were times when we moved the ball well but then we have that negative play where we put ourselves and go from first-and-10 to second-and-15 with a false start. We are shooting ourselves in the foot after we have done good things — we are beating ourselves and these things are fixable.”

Lieser said that he feels that the Eagles could easily be 3-1 right now instead of 1-3.

“We let a couple of games get away from us and we tell the kids that we are not far away from being a 3-1 team and you feel a lot better about yourself when you are 3-1,” he said. “The mistakes are fixable on our part.”

New Ulm hosts Worthington Friday at 7 p.m. for Homecoming.

GREYHOUNDS DEFENSE STANDS STRONG

In the first half of the New Ulm Cathedral-Wabasso football game Friday, the Rabbits ran 36 offensive plays compared to just 17 for the Greyhounds. But yet Wabasso held only a 12-6 lead thanks to the play of the Cathedral defense.

Led by 14 tackles from Mason Sprenger, 12 each from Camden Berg and Logan Klawitter and 11 stops from Evan Blekestad, the Greyhounds had a chance late in the game for a win.

For the game, the Rabbits ran 63 offensive plays compared to 38 for Cathedral.

“Wabasso has been scoring a lot of points this season,” Cathedral head coach Denny Lux said. “And we did not give up that long deep throw and when they threw underneath we were tackling in the open field — our tacking was much better this week.”

Lux again gave credit to the play of his defense

“Wabasso can grind it out — they have a strong offensive line — but we really played well,” Lux said. “We probably gave them two extra possessions in the game and that was the difference.”

This game also saw the return of senior running back Adrian Henry, who is going to give a boost to the Greyhounds backfield.

“We are moving our three running backs around,” Lux said.

Cathedral is at Nicollet on Friday.

CHARGERS LEARNING HOW TO WIN

The Minnesota Valley Lutheran Chargers football team is a young team learning how to win.

Saturday they lost a very winnable game against Windom in overtime.

Three turnovers, two false start penalties on their opening drive of the second half and a costly holding penalty coming when they were on the Windom 9-yard line eventually bit them in the end.

“We did not run the ball like we would have liked,” Chargers head coach Jim Buboltz said “They blitzed us a lot — put a lot of pressure up front — we had a couple of costly penalties that moved the ball backwards.”

That pressure led to the three interceptions in the game with one of the picks leading to a Windom second quarter touchdown.

Chargers head coach Jim Buboltz said he was not upset about his team’s effort.

“We keep giving effort like that we will be in more games,” he said.

The Chargers are at Jackson County Central on Friday.