Red’s recap: Greyhounds roll into first-round bye
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Tuesday night's Nine-Player South District, West Subdistrict football game between New Ulm Cathedral and Edgerton was a great game to watch for local fans.
The Greyhounds scored on their first offensive play of the game on a 63-yard run from Alex Portner and then their last offensive play of the game on a 45-yard field goal off of the foot of Andrew Stern and a 32-30 Cathedral win.
Stern's 45-yard bomb that split the uprights is record for New Ulm Cathedral and believed to be a high school record for New Ulm.
"It was a total team effort," Greyhounds head coach Denny Lux said as his team closed out the regular season at 7-1. "Edgerton is such a solid team. They have four losses this year by a total of 5 points and that was finally a game where we beat a top tier team and that was important for us.
"We talked all week long in practice that we need to get ourselves up to that level. This was the first time in four years that we have beaten that type pf a team."
And it was a game where the Greyhounds defense was on the field for long periods.
The Flying Dutchmen ran 73 offensive plays in the game compared to 37 for the Greyhounds.
"We had some long runs -- quick scoring at times," Lux said. "But what you really have to give our guys credit for is to play that much defense and we had a couple of stands in the red zone and to turn around and still have that much energy and stamina on the offensive side. The fans on both sides really saw a good high school football game."
Lux said that his team has played hard and with commitment all season long.
"But what Edgerton did for us is they got us back up to the speed that we had to get to," he said. "The previous three games we scored a lot of points (42, 71 and 57) but this game we had to get up to that speed. We finally caught up to their speed in the third quarter. It took us a half to get adjusted to how good they were and what they were doing offensively and defensively.
"And there was a quiet confidence in our players in our huddle [Tuesday] and every time I went out there was this quiet confidence they had in themselves and also in the field goal that Andrew would hit it straight. We have a good snapper in [Nolan] Netzke and a good holder in [Eli] Anderson. That kick goes down for the ages because I do not know if there has been a longer field goal kicked at Johnson Field."
The Greyhounds open playoffs on October 31 at home at 2 p.m against the winner of the first-round game between Nicollet and Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart.
CHARGERS GET GROUND GAME ROLLING
While the 406 yards rushing Tuesday night against Sibley East was not a school record, Chargers head coach Jim Buboltz was pleased with the performance to prepare for playoffs.
"The win was good for our guys confidence because we started to crank things up against Luverne and Lake Crystal," he said. "And we have been playing well."
The regular season ending win moves the Chargers to 4-4 and they will face Sibley East again Tuesday at 7 p.m. at home in the first round of Section 3AA playoffs.
Buboltz feels that it is not hard to play the same team twice in a span of seven days.
"I think they guys are happy that it is a week because we had game so close together (three games in 11 days)," he said. "So the time away will be good to heal the body up and get some more prep time to because of the quick turnaround because of MEA."
Buboltz said that he is not looking so much at his opponent as he is making sure his players are physically and mentally OK.
Buboltz thinks that the solid running game will open up the Chargers air assault in the postseason.
"Teams have to put eight players in the box and that hopefully gets things open for our receivers and pass more on early downs now too," he said.
Buboltz believes that his team needs to improve defensively for the playoffs.
"The effort that we had against Lake Crystal and then to see [Lake Crystal] go to Luverne and beat Luverne, that tells you where our kids are playing," Buboltz said. "We are doing good things right now and we could see Lake Crystal again in the playoffs."
He also feels that Jackson County is not the clear-cut favorite in the section.
"Luverne beat Jackson (36-30) and Lake Crystal beat Luverne (27-6), so Lake Crystal has pushed their game up and we had Lake Crystal played even, so I just like where we are right now," Buboltz said. "We have the talent to win the section, but we need to play better defense."
EAGLES ON ROAD FOR PLAYOFFS
The New Ulm Eagles will open the Section 2AAAA Football Tournament on Tuesday at Hutchinson off of a 35-14 home loss to Waseca Wednesday night.
But looking at the play chart from that contest, the loss to Waseca was a game where the Eagles ran 59 offensive plays compared to 42 for the Bluejays.
"They scored on their first drive (the first of two, nine-play scoring drives in the game) and for us offensively -- especially in the first half -- we would have one play where we would shoot ourselves in the foot," New Ulm head coach Derek Lieser said. "And our second drive we started out deep in our own territory, 3-yard line, and we marched down deep into their territory -- took a sack and got behind the sticks," he said.
It was a New Ulm drive that took 16 plays and ended up stalling on the Waseca 22-yard line.
The Eagles also had non-scoring drives of 11 plays, two of nine plays and one of 13 plays.
"We do some really good things [offensively], but then we have some lows and [we need to] eliminate those moments," Lieser said. "It was a tough night, but we showed what we are capable of doing but we did not show it often enough.
"And we did move the ball -- we showed that we can do really good things -- we can move the ball at a really high level. We are not going third-and-10. We showed that we can do a lot of good things. We just need that one more play here or there and that was where those drives fell out."
The Eagles -- one of the smallest AAAA schools -- now enter Section 2AAAA play at Hutchinson on Tuesday.
"For us to play a 4A schedule across the board for the season would struggle to match up," Lieser said. "And that is physicality-wise up front. We feel like we have the skilled players to match -- we have maybe one or two kids who are 250 [pounds] whereas the 4A schools have a dozen.
"We are the small 4A school on the block and St. Peter is in the same boat with us. But we are going to do the best that we can [Tuesday]."