Friday Night Lights V: a tough one to swallow

In their third home game of the season, the B-B-E Jaguars football team was outplayed in nearly every facet of the game and ended up losing 14-7 to West Central Area/Ashby. Both teams played to a scoreless tie through the first quarter, but then the Jaguars scored first to take a 7-0 lead with 9:26 to go in the second quarter when Tanner Heinsius ran in a touchdown from five yards out.

WCA/A then scored to tie it up with just 49 seconds left in the first half on a one-yard run.

Both teams traded punches time and time again throughout the second half. The Jaguars misfired and stumbled inside the 20-yard line early in the fourth quarter. With 10:06 left in the game, a 32-yard field goal fell just a few feet short of passing through the uprights.

Had the field goal made it for a 10-7 lead, it wouldn't have mattered in the end. WCA/A punched in a touchdown on fourth down with just 20 seconds left in the game. The running play needed just a foot to go, and their quarterback ran it in behind his center to give them a win to savor on their one-hour drive back to Barrett.

Here's an abysmal statistic that sums up the game: 2.87 yards per play...that's the average for yards gained per play through tonight's game for B-B-E when you take out a 55-yard catch by Sidney Schacter that took place on their lone scoring drive. B-B-E accumulated 187 yards of offense tonight on 47 plays, but over one-fourth of those yards came on Schacter's big catch that set up the Jaguars on the WCA/A 11-yard line. The Knights ran 67 plays for 234 total yards of offense. Of their 234 yards, 222 came on the ground.The Knights had 16 first downs in the game; the Jaguars had just eight. Key to those stats was WCA/A going four-for-seven on fourth-down conversions.

The WCA/A Knights are a Class 2A football team. This was a huge opportunity for the Jaguars to gain points in the QRF standings and help themselves in the Section 4A seeding outlook. They let it slip away. It's inexcusable.

Meanwhile, the Knights improved to 2-3 on the season with their second win in a row. They gear up for their annual Homecoming game in Barrett next week with Parkers Prairie coming to town. After that, teams on WCA/A's schedule include Kimball Area in Week Seven and then Upsala/Swanville Area in Week Eight. They have a shot at running the table and entering the Section 6AA playoffs with a 5-3 record and a home game in the quarterfinals.

In the Mid State Sub-District 3, the Jaguars fell from a three-way tie for second place to a four-way tie for third place (2-2). The other three teams in third place are Parkers Prairie, Royalton and WCA/A. K-M-S is 1-3 and in seventh place, while Kimball Area is 0-4 and in eighth place.

The outlook in Section 4A is mixed at best for the Jaguars. They are flirting with dropping to fifth place. I really believed they were good enough to get the necessary wins for a very favorable number three seed. That theory went up in smoke tonight.

Up next for the 2-3 Jaguars: a short trip to Murdock to face the Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg Fighting Saints. K-M-S lost 36-22 tonight at Parkers Prairie to fall to 1-4 on the season. However, if the Jaguars don't come out firing and turn things around from tonight, both teams will leave the field in Murdock next week with 2-4 records.

Midstate District, Sub-District 3 football scores on Sept. 18:
Upsala/Swanville Area 51, Kimball Area 21
Parkers Prairie 36, Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg 22
Browerville/Eagle Valley 21, Royalton 0

Area football scores in Week Five on Sept. 18:
New London-Spicer 14, Little Falls 7 (Wildcats get their second win in a row)
MACCRAY 6, Hancock 0
Albany 34, Zimmerman 28
Mayer Lutheran 28, Norwood-Young America 7
Pierz 70, Howard Lake-Waverly 20
Tracy-Milroy-Balaton 17, Dawson-Boyd 0
United North Central 25, Long Prairie-Grey Eagle 0
Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City 22, Benson 6
Montevideo 12, BOLD 6
Renville County West 33, Wheaton/Herman-Norcross 30
Alexandria 57, Bemidji OT (at Bemidji, wow)
Willmar 34, St. Cloud Apollo 14 (Cardinals snap a three-game skid)
Minnewaska Area 34, Sauk Centre 21 (Lakers are 4-1 and off to their best start since 2002)
Osakis 42, Frazee 36 (6 OT!)
Rockford Area 21, Holdingford 20
Lester Prairie/Holy Trinity 15, Lake Crystal-Wellcome Memorial 14
St. Paul Central 36, Minneapolis North 35
Paynesville Area 34, Eden Valley-Watkins 28 (a huge win for the Bulldogs in this new neighborhood rivalry in a game played at Eden Valley)