Surely Pope's squad was focused. The Tigers prevailed 26-24. So many highlights to try to organize here.
Our quarterback is only a sophomore! My, he showed steadiness and precision that might be associated with upperclassmen. His passing arm generated 238 yards. He ran forward with the football for an additional 91 yards. He completed 16 of his 26 aerial attempts and netted three TD passes. The most dramatic of those three was with under three minutes left to play - he passed to Owen Anderson for 24 yards and a score.
This drive had Huebner run with the football for gains of 16 and 12 yards. There were just three plays en route to the end zone. Anderson had a game total five catches for 109 yards.
Huebner-to-Anderson generated scoring magic in the second quarter: a 23-yard hookup for six.
Setting the table
Let's backtrack and credit the defense. Before the game-winning drive began, the Tiger 'D' bore down to stop the Pioneers on fourth-and-one!
On our drive preceding that, we scored with a two-yard run that had Anderson with the ball. Most critical was the two-point conversion play here. It worked with Huebner passing to Max Lietz. The big play on the drive was a 50-yard pass, Huebner-to-Anderson.
The defense took the field and stuffed Pierz on the fourth-and-one. So the stage was set: MACA got focused for the three-play drive that made the difference and neutralized the Homecoming emotions for the Pioneers. The Pioneers had their win streak stopped. Nothing could lift the optimism of MACA fans more!
For much of my life, "sophomore" has been considered a young age for making significant varsity contributions. Shall I say, in the 1980s it was really unheard-of. So much so, I know Tiger basketball had an actual policy of forcing sophomores to play 'B' team. Our then-athletic director even confirmed that for me because I was pressing him: I noticed certain players who seemed ready for the higher level. But it was no dice. I started speaking out about this, out and around, in a reasonable and measured way, and found that you could get in trouble in Morris MN with such talk, any talk really that was skeptical. The teachers union was very strong then, just suffocating, I would say.
Things appear far better and more enlightened now. So we have a gifted sophomore QB developing rapidly and all is right with the world!
I'm not writing for the newspaper any more but I can still write. I invite you to compare my coverage today with what you see on the Stevens County Times website. Theirs must be better, because that's just the way it is. Hey this is Morris, and there are certain bedrock assumptions you have to make.
Huebner came out of Friday with a marquee type of luster, deserved, but how about that defense! Coach Pope was quoted saying "getting those defensive stops was the ballgame."
The Pioneers built a 24-12 lead in the fourth quarter. They went on a very extended drive of 20 plays after starting out in a hole. They were at their own three. Methodically they marched 97 yards. Their quarterback, Garrett Cummings, ran the ball in from the one. So the Pioneers had a lead of two scores.
Pierz had a limited passing attack on the night: five completions, nine attempts, 52 yards. They rolled forward with a running game that netted 331 yards on 64 carries. The Pioneers did a lot that was right, like zero turnovers, zero penalties! Reflecting, it seemed their biggest handicap was a failure to come up with big plays. Oh, and let's make note of this: they went for two on conversions all four times, and came up empty! There's your difference in the game right there. Their regular kicker was sidelined with an ankle injury.
The Tigers weren't scintillating on conversions but we made one in three tries.
The top Pierz ballcarrier was Kirby Fischer: 15 carries, 104 yards. Derek Stangle had a big 45-yard TD carry that produced the Pioneers' halftime lead of 18-12. Reese Young had 22 carries for 81 yards. Jacob LeBlanc got 16 handoffs and covered 62. LeBlanc had TD runs of four and three yards.
Backtracking back to game's start, let's review how MACA struck on its opening drive. Huebner tossed a six-yard scoring pass to Tyler Berlinger. Berlinger had a harvest of eight catches on the night, 104 yards. Let's acknowledge Mitchell Moser rushing for six yards and Riley Asmus with three catches, 29 yards.
Lots of special memories wrapped up in the game for Motown. The Pioneers will have to regroup. Looks like a "down" year for Minnewaska Area? The Lakers fell 43-0 at the hands of Rockford Friday. Down year for Benson? The Braves fell 28-0 to KMS. YME beat LQPV in a game wildly high with scoring, 48-19. Sometimes the scoring can be too much, don't you think?
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| (image from twitter) |
The rapidly-evolving media warrants our attention. So here I share from an email I sent to a similarly interested individual early this morning (Saturday). Truth be told, I sometimes rise in the middle of the night to check communications. I often go to bed early in evening, then get up in mid-night, which is a lifestyle that was typical in the days before electric lights! A book has been written about that. Anyway, here goes with a portion of the email I sent to my Bonanza Valley friend:
I went to our library yesterday to look at Morris paper. Our last week's game against Melrose never appeared on the SCT website. That website is so bare minimum, it should just be ended. So I looked at the Melrose game coverage in the print paper, and it was a condensed article. Frankly it served the purpose. Jim Morrison would probably say "amen." It was not super short but it did not have the standard "scoring summary" with stat report, a la West Central Tribune.
Which makes me wonder: I suppose the WCT demands info from a whole list of categories and in some cases, the coaches may have a personal approach of not compiling all that stuff. Often when I see errors in WCT football, it's with the score-by-quarters, and I think that's because the reporting coach has to think on his feet to figure this during the interview. So maybe the MACA coach as a matter of personal philosophy doesn't slavishly compile an array of game stats. Maybe this is less practical in a very high-scoring game.
I noticed that when football resumed after the pandemic pause, there were many very high-scoring games, some ridiculously so. I wrote a blog post after a game and stated that I just wasn't going to do a scoring review. Too much scoring cheapens the game, like Barry Bonds home runs. It's a principle of marketing: you have to have some scarcity. Man, I remember West Central Conference football in the '80s being just the opposite. Maybe there's less emphasis on contact in practices, for player safety, and this makes the defense not as effective? Man, how about that "Tua" player in the NFL.
Wow, Minnewaska got manhandled by Rockford. We had lost by just eight to Rockford. Benson got manhandled by KMS. Example of high-scoring game: YME vs. LQPE. Will we ever see the day when these schools identified by initials will get more logical place-based names? I hate MACCRAY. These names are an obvious sop to political interests, and that is getting dated and old-fashioned. Maybe you could blog about that sometime. If "West Central Area High School" is in Barrett, how about just calling it Barrett? All schools now can draw from well outside its boundaries - it's understood.
Our radio station website has done a fair job with sports reports on its website. Brief but fairly reliable, but so far in the new school year the standards have dropped. A friend tells me the radio station is "down to four people." So it's business stress for sure. I can tell that certain coaches are enthusiastic about "feeding" the media while others aren't - for example the cross country coach is doing great getting updates on the radio station website. Same with tennis. I suspect these coaches just type nice little emails, all set to be copied/pasted. There was even a timely tennis review on the SCT website a few days ago. If I were still at paper and relied on coaches who totally spoon-fed me, people would scream about how lazy I was. People would swear. If I remember correctly, the football game vs. Melrose had three sentences on the radio station site.
The "Minnesota Scores" website is tremendously helpful just as a home base for knowing score/schedule info. When you type a lot of sports, you have to refresh on this basic info often.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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