Strong on both sides of the ball (VIDEOS*)

Additional videos have been added to this blog post late Sunday night...

The B-B-E Jaguars football team recently earned their first shutout win in three years after they defeated West Central Area 32-0 on Friday. The last time the Jaguars blanked an opponent was in the season opener of the 2021 season, when they beat Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg 26-0 in Belgrade in Week One. Prior to that shutout win, you have to go back another six years before we had a shutout win, which came in the regular season finale in 2015 when the Jaguars won 14-0 in Kimball Area before going 1-1 in the Section 4A playoffs.

Prior to that shutout win in 2015, it was another five years prior that the Jaguars blanked an opponent. That shutout occurred at WCA's home field in Barrett in the 2010 season opener, when the Jaguars won 13-0. That was Coach Moscho's first season as head coach, and the Jaguars later earned what was just the program's second-ever section final appearance.

Here's video featuring the starter introductions (offense) followed by the game's first series against WCA:


B-B-E's defense was nothing short of punishing. The first half was a near-total disaster offensively for WCA, who dealt with Jaguar defenders in their backfield across the first 24 minutes of the game. WCA's fourth series started with a questionable horsecollar penalty against B-B-E, and then it had a four-yard gain and a four-yard loss. The fourth play featured a 15-yard B-B-E facemask penalty with a first down on B-B-E's 17-yard line. Next came a four-yard loss and a one-yard loss before WCA's sophomore quarterback tripped in the backfield. What resulted then was a fourth-and-21 play. WCA attempted a pass, and it floated short of the receiving corps and was picked off by Ethan Mueller, who returned it to B-B-E's 48-yard line. On paper, that WCA drive yielded 31 yards of offense, all from penalties.

Here's a video from the middle of the first quarter with the Jaguars on defense:


As I stated on Friday night after the game in the prior blog post, WCA's offense was limited to a net three positive yards across their first three possessions: three yards, one yard and negative one yard. Through six possessions, with the sixth possession being the first of the third quarter, WCA's offense had generated a net negative 22 yards. The misery continued on their seventh possession, which ended on a 4th-and-12 with a punt after they generated a net three yards of offense to go three-and-out...then suffering a false start penalty.

Here's a video beginning with WCA on their fourth series of the first half...you can see how it ended on fourth down:


B-B-E's defense was active all night and made things miserable for the Knights backfield. Unfortunately, on B-B-E's following possession in the second quarter, a holding penalty gashed their momentum, and they were forced to punt on a 4th-and-22 possession with 5:20 on the clock. WCA's next series lost a net negative 21 yards, and they punted to midfield with 3:20 on the clock. B-B-E then drove in a touchdown on a nine-play drive that ended with Josh Walstrom catching a four-yard touchdown pass from Luke Illies with 26 seconds left before halftime.

It took until WCA's eighth possession before they generated meaningful offense. On that drive, WCA benefitted from a big kickoff return by Hunter Gruchow to the B-B-E 49-yard line. They gained one first down after that, but the drive was snuffed out by an Aiden Mueller interception.

Later in the game to seal the shutout, the JV defense got the job done in the latter part of the fourth quarter when they stopped the Knights inside the five-yard line as time expired. Well done!

Here's a postgame interview with Ethan Mueller after the game:


On offense, the Jaguars had an outstanding night with 135 rushing yards to go with a whopping 273 passing yards. Illies's quarterback rating was an incredible 144.6! (A perfect quarterback game has a rating of 158.3 by the way.)

More to come.

Just for fun! Let's go back over 14 years ago...to the 2010 season...
I dug back in this blog's archives and found this blog post...Friday Night Lights I from the 2010 season. Holy moly! Fourteen years ago when our entire current varsity football team was either in diapers or in preschool. Click to see the recap from Coach Moscho's first game as head coach: https://bbejaguars.blogspot.com/2010/09/friday-night-lights-part-i-b-b-e.html.