 Hi everybody and welcome to the Lakeland locker room. Once again I'm John Weber joined today by Jim Zabrowski the head football coach at Lakeland College. Jim as usual on the show we like to get right to it and unfortunately this week we have some bad news. We had a little trouble in River City as I like to say and unfortunately you guys fell 41 to 20 to Concordia in Mekwan, Wisconsin. Yeah it was you know the score. It's one of those games where the score maybe didn't indicate exactly how the game was played. I guess sometimes in those kind of games if you get beat up and you don't get a lot of yards, you don't play well you're like you know they got us this week. We kind of I told the kids we didn't necessarily win we kind of necessarily lost that game and we didn't play well in certain spurts and what happened was I told the kids we played well for 56 minutes. Unfortunately the game was 60 minutes and in those 4 minutes we didn't play well. We gave about 31 points on various different plays on both sides of the ball and the toughest thing as a coach is you coach what you see. I've always loved that. I forgot who I heard it from but if you coach what you see it's not the kids. If the kids make a mistake it's us as coaches who didn't get that point across or didn't have that you know it's grained in their head so I felt bad after that game knowing that we had opportunities to win that game and it might sound crazy if someone wasn't there they might have been like well 41-20 they started looking at the stats and looking at the game. We were inside their 25-year-old in the whole game. We just didn't make plays down there big play offense and they're going to make plays they got great speed kids and skill kids and they run really well but we had good opportunity and unfortunately we didn't get the job done and we got to be able to do that in big games and hopefully you hate to lose the game and make it a learning. You like to win the game as a learning experience but you lose the game you got to tell the kids it's a learning experience. This is the kind of game we want to be in. Hopefully for as long as I'm you know allowed to be coach here that we played a lot more of these kind of games the kids get more and more acclimated to them and like hey this is just a step six to us and we got to get this thing done and we're as good as they are. So the only thing came out of where I felt good was I said if they are you know we'd be McMurray was a defending champs and they're a little down this year but Concordia and our two teams that are usually up there in the conference but we played this one and it wasn't like there was a talent level drop off it wasn't like oh man we're going to have to do so much no we just got to play better in those games and make less mistakes than they do to win the game so that's where I felt good I said we're there we just got to get the job done. Yep and you hit it right on the head you guys clearly dominated the game statistically which is probably a frustration to you too first down rushing yards passing yards totally yards time of possession pretty much everything you guys were led Concordia and so I mean your kids have to look back and at least feel positive about that except for again those four minutes right and big games and I don't care if it's baseball or you know high school or college or pro football it comes down to I told the kids big kids or big time players make big time players big time games and they had some kids who were seniors been there before I think and they made some plays we made some plays too unfortunately we did not make some plays you know in certain situations and like I said I feel worse about that because you know a lot of times like I said you're watching your kid or your kids and they make a bad play like did I rep that enough that I mean it's easy as a coach for us to say oh that kid played bad well no that's such a cop out it's sad you know that's just a sad way to look as a coach and if a kid makes a mistake we make the mistake as coaches and we got to go back and make sure we don't make those same mistakes in crucial situations and we fumble we fumble at the end of the half which could which was hurt us we every time we made a mistake they capitalized every time they made a mistake we didn't capitalize unlike a McMurray game or even a Carthage game they made a mistake we pounced on it you know kind of that deal so we the momentum would swing but they'd swing right back to them we couldn't keep the momentum swing going so we got to work on that and really hard by making people pay when they make mistakes and not giving them opportunities to get the ball roll but the truth of the matter is these kids really haven't been in that position for a long time I mean maybe looking back I think some of the seniors they started out maybe four and one their freshman year I might be wrong about that might even been the year before they got here but they haven't been they've been battling 500 really for the last four years and all of a sudden now they get in a big game and it might take the growing experience right and you hate you know it's something else as a coach you also look and say well maybe that's it and me being a I don't know confident or arrogant whatever else coaches all are who want to be good coaches you're like hey forget that we got to play but maybe that was part of it maybe that was maybe you know maybe we didn't prepare properly for that big moment but you know as the game went on we were there we just weren't we didn't make those plays when we could and hopefully those kids do grow and I told them yesterday when we practiced I said hey get used to being in these positions because you grab great opportunity to finish and the top of this league still be a first or second if you do what you have to do you can't worry about what anybody else does we do we do you finish first or second this league from this moment forward you'll always be picked you know it isn't conferences we ever finish this first or second doesn't matter how good or bad they are the next year they're always picked up there because it's kind of a hey what did you do for me last year well so we get that point all of a sudden everyone knows we're there I told us because you have you have a time right now opportunity to be the best team since 1997 record wise and even before then there weren't a lot of 10-0 season there was a 10-0-97 before that it was maybe it's maybe two or seven and three or something around there but you got a great opportunity to get this thing right back to where it was and then just catapult yourself in that moment forward. Let's take a look at the game you guys fell behind seven nothing late in the first or excuse me early in the first quarter in court you jumped out on an 80 yard pass play from the quarterback Bonham bird to the receiver Collier. And we had them third I think I tell you what after a while you try to forget the key as quickly as possible but we we did kick off we had them third and twelve we had them third and twelve and we ended up just getting beat you know we got beat deep which is really you know it can't happen you know especially on third and twelve sure you know and they make a big play and and they jump ahead and we come back and almost make a big play as I was game when it was almost almost oh so close and you know you can't keep doing that to yourselves and they made a play a quite a good throw they came in a great catch and where they went we came back and came right back down the field and we had a fourth and I got fourth and two on the twelve and we drop a pass you know first down pass which could have got us right back in it. A couple more drives went back and forth and then again another big play this time they had a forty five yard interception return by Levon Hall. Yeah it wasn't a bad throw. Give me a good break. Our give me a good break. The ball is just a touch behind them. Their DB is a pretty special player. We got behind them a couple of times and we thought we had them off us a little bit. He made a good break ours here made an okay break. Throw was just a little bit behind but he made a deep come back throw. Give me a great play. Tipped it three times to himself. He put Corral within and took it in and right then you're going fourteen nothing. Act Acacordia. Fogs rolling in. Misty wind you're going off. They kick off with the wind. They pin us. We get like the eight yard line. You and me are talking the way up. Here's what I'm most proud of our kids most pleased with is they're like oh man eight yard we put a ninety two yard drive together fourteen plays or something and come back and make it fourteen seven. Jeff Taff catches a nine yard or ten yard fade from Brandon Parker. Now all of a sudden it's fourteen seven. Unfortunately you're going to read the next play. Unfortunately that's the seven oh two mark and let's put this perspective at six forty seven mark Brandon Parker seventy yard run. Yeah we kicked off and as a windy game we kicked into the wind. Short kick. They fumbled it. We almost get it back. You're like this is here. Here we go again. Next play. They run about counter play. The kid cuts it back really great running my little quick son of a gun that just you know he can gash it and he gash it. You're going to read another big play that happens right after that. Well first you guys had a great big play. I mean people watching this game just had to be exhausted. That little support there was amazing. Like a tennis match. But you guys of course court got an 85 yard touchdown reception for the loop. Yeah that was second. I think it was the second play after they kicked off and we had the ball back. All of a sudden we had an 80 yard screen pass for the touchdown. I was playing 114 and I was going totally right back in it. And then the end of the half was really tough on us. That was just a tough situation. They drove and kicked the field. Go make it 24-14. Alright there's a minute something left in the half. We get the ball at ok field position. I said to myself hey we're just going to run the ball once or twice. If we get great yardage let's see what happens. I wasn't going to go hurry up inside our 20 yard line. We make two plays with the 38 now. I was going 53 seconds left. 30 yards. We get one pass play. You never know what could happen. And worst we get one of those Hail Marys into the end zone and maybe get us a cheap one. Excuse me at the half. We ended up dropping back fumbling. We were talking about ball security and speed smart. Unfortunately he gets the ball stripped. They had to fade again with like 20 seconds left in the half. I think it was wasn't it. And they go up 31. So the game could have been 24-14. Makes it 31-14. Kids are down. You know everyone's down. They're like oh no here we. And I just kind of talked to them at half time. I said hey there's been a lot of great comebacks before. It's only 17 points. It's not like you're getting out played. You're getting out big played. You know but we're not getting out of play. And we come back out. We keep it closed in the third quarter. Let's see what happens in the fourth quarter. And you guys came back midway through the third quarter. You guys had a denim punch it in from three yards out. That made it 31-20 at this point. And 31-24. It was 31-20. I was going and we're two scores away. We got opportunities now. We make something out of plus. We were in the red zone two times before that already. We had that third quarter worked out. I couldn't have scripted a better third quarter. We stopped them on defense. We got to fall back on offense every time inside their 50. And we ended up going four on fourth down. I wasn't missing it. And then getting it like you said now it's 31-20. And we still have an opportunity. Plus you had the win at your back in the fourth quarter. Yeah. They gave us the win. I think they wanted to make sure we didn't get in the fourth quarter. Which gave us a great chance to really get this thing rolling again. I hate to bring it up again unfortunately. You're going another big play. Another big play. A 40 yard run. You're going to start the fourth quarter wasn't it? Yeah. Right at the start. 14-50 to go on the fourth quarter. 10 seconds in. Simmons ran in for 40 yards out and that made it 38-20. Yeah. Tough thing was that came back from 31-20. We threw in our step shop a tip pass. Defense just got us a funnel back. So one of those, here we go. Yeah. 31-20. And all of a sudden we just took, I feel like that took the wind out of us in terms of, we got momentum back for about two plays. We go back to them. Third kid gashes us again. It's 38-20. And instead of sitting there and moaning about it, what do we do? We drive back down. And have about an eight minute drive or something, or a six minute drive. About a six minute drive. We get down there fourth and two on the 10-yard line, or 11-yard line around there. And we miss a, you know, we had open receiver. We just didn't see him for some reason. We just didn't see him. And unfortunately that stuff happens. And that was kind of the end of that game. They could feel it go late. And that was it. But we had another opportunity in the red zone. So we had, I think we had six times inside the red zone. We scored twice. You just can't do it. You can't go 33% in the red zone and win a game. I think another big difference that's shown in this game too is that obviously we talked about the big plays a few times. And one thing I think that stands out too is the advantage that they had a little bit with their kicking game. I mean, we've been struggling a little bit this year. Yeah, our punting game is solid. Our punting game is solid. Both sides of the punt, punt return good. Kick out coverage hasn't been bad. Kick out returns here and there. But our just PAT field goal game is just where it needs to be. And unfortunately, sometimes I think that wears in us as coaches, at least into my head, or sometimes if you have a really solid, it's not a offense to anybody. We've got to correct this coach. We've got to do something. It's unfair what's going on. Sometimes you kick those field goals. And all of a sudden, if you kick two field goals, now I might have been 31-26 or 31-27. We had time where you could have said, hey, if I get a field goal here, we can still get a touchdown later. But unfortunately, when your kicking game is not going well, you go for a lot of fourth down. It's never a high percentage play. If it were, everybody would do it. But we've got to get that straight now. We've got four games left. We've really got to get that thing rolling so we can not be nervous kicking a field goal. Sometimes kicking. I'm getting the sign. I've got to go to break here. They need to go pretty quick. So we're going to come back. We're going to take a look at some highlights. We get back in the second half of the show and talk about next week's opponent. So stay with us. We'll be right back with more on the Lake and Lock Room. Before she's a twinkle in your eye, that's when you need to take folic acid every day. After that, it's too late to prevent some serious birth defects. Folic acid now before you know it. What does being involved really mean? Is it making grilled cheese sandwiches for a sleepover, staying for the curtain call at the talent show, or learning the names of their favorite bands? Believe it or not, right now there are parents just like you out there talking about things like this. From school to home, from friends to futures. And we'd like you to be a part of it. National PTA. Every child, one voice. Hi everybody and welcome back to the Lake and Lock Room. Once again, I'm John Weber, joined today by Jim Zabrowski, the head football coach at Lakeland. Jim, we were just talking about the game and we're going to get the videos set up here in a minute. But I just talked about the kicking game a little bit and of course we talked about the outcome 41-20. At the end of the game, what did you say to your guys first? I said, I think you'll appreciate this. A lot of tennis coaches try to go in there and they try and sugarcoat stuff. I said, hey, I'm going to be honest with you, man. Nothing I say is going to make you feel any better. What do you guys say? That they knew it was a big game. We knew it was a big game. We unfortunately lost a big game. And it's not like anything I say is going to make them feel all of a sudden great. But I just told them, hey, you know, winning or losing this game should not have made you play harder or not as hard in game seven. I know we got four games left in this season. We had a great opportunity to be the most successful team in the school in the last seven years, let alone, I bet you, like the top ten records of this school, they'd be in Tuesday, it's going to be somewhere in the ballpark. So at least it's going to be in the conversation. I said, you guys got a great chance to lay the foundation down for something really special. I go, and that's what you got to do and you can't control what Concordia does from this moment forward. They're in first place, now we're in second place. It's one game difference. If you start thinking about what they're going to do every week, you forget about what you have to do. All of a sudden you start stumbling. You just take one step at a time like we always have. Take care of our business. Concordia's stumbles will be there. You know, these kids, what happens if they lose or what? You can't worry about that. You worry about, as I've seen teams worry about that next, you know, they're back in the dumper because they kept trying to worry about what Concordia's trying to do. We can't control Concordia. We can control, you know, Lakeland, so we're going to control Lakeland and what we do, so that's what I tell them. I say, you're allowed to, I always tell them after a win, you can be, you can celebrate and be excited until two o'clock at practice. It'll say anything that occurs at the loss. You can let this thing be done at two o'clock or you can let it eat you up until next thing you know your head's rolling because you just played four games not as good, so by two o'clock we're going to go over some things, we're going to say some things and then it's over on our next game. One thing I think might get overlooked too is the advantage of having a JV program because I know that sometimes within our baseball program we've come off a tough loss and then all of a sudden the kids get re-energized and they forget it, they get back on the field. You guys had to come back on Sunday and play ripping in a JV. Right, and we won, I think that was a big win for us at this school. We ended up winning 26-15 and it was good. Kids played well and we have some good young kids playing which is exciting as well. I think it's always good when you get a win somewhere in your program especially after a tough loss. It would have been twice as damaging when your JVs were out there and got beat or something so they played really well. They kind of picked us up and they played hard and we had some kids who are going to be good players for us out there playing. Yeah, well let's go ahead and look at the tapes. I think we're all set up and ready to go here. All right. Coach Worsley G, let's see what he did. Early on in the game I said that's our running back who ends up making a couple of plays later getting great swarm tackle by our defense. Here's Jeff Taff catching a fade. Phil was kind of a dark day and a foggy day and a good old mech on. But Jeff Taff makes a great catch in the corner of the end zone to make that 14-7. And this is Courtney Gatlin after that big run making 21-7. Courtney has the screen pass up top makes one guy miss and he's out the gate. And the great thing about this play is you're not sure how fast Courtney is but he realizes he's a lot faster than a kid trying to catch him and that's a good thing. And Courtney pulls away and Courtney's going to be a pretty darn good player for us. Here's that end of the half. We end up getting a little bubble. It's probably the worst thing that could probably happen because I started feeling good like hey, we might get in position. That's Jeff Taff making another catch. This is Marcus Denton making a really nice play around a swing pass. Good blocking by our receivers. He gashes it. I almost slithers through everything for about 12 markers. This keeps getting better and better. Here's Marcus getting 10 or 12. There's a 152-pound kid blowing up at safety and getting 12. Here's our defense again led by Rosie and those guys making a great play. I mean, that's how it happened all game. Here's Marcus diving him two yards out to make a 31-20 momentum back on our side. Here's our stroke in the quarterback, fumble. You know, the ball goes out of bounds. It doesn't go out of bounds. It goes to that kid who makes about seven different moves and still gets tackled. And here's another play by our defense. The interior defense played pretty well. And there's a fumble. At 31-20, there's a fumble that got us an opportunity to get us right back into it. Here's a nice catch by James Hayes. On a corner out, nice move. Gets about 35 yards. Gets back in position again. Back in the red zone as I kept telling the kids. We just kept being back in the red zone, back in the red zone. Our red zone, they went from the 26-yard into the end zone. You know, you got to be good in the red zone. And good teams, and very good teams are usually very good in the red zone. They either, they have a high percentage right now. Right now, we're not as high percentage as we need to be. Because you're not going to get in the red zone at a time. But if you do, you got to make teams, you know, you got to make teams pay for letting you in the red zone. We did a great job in this game. Between the 25 and 25, we did great. Inside 25, we didn't do as great as we needed to. So, so we got to do better job. And the court, they just had big play. You know, stroke, stroke, stroke, punt, and then a big play. They only had one turnover I think, and that's what helped them out a lot. We had four. Let me read out something last year, so people can really see how much you did. You know, really dominate the game. First downs, you guys had 24 compared to Concordia 16. You had 45 rushes for 148 yards. They had 43 for 250. Right, they're a rushing team, right? Yeah, but again, two or three of those came on huge, big, big plays. Passing yards, 15 yards, we're only at 58 yards, excuse me, 58 plays for 387 yards. Time of possession, 33-10 to 26-50, as we just go on and on and on in the examples there, you guys. But then you look at the two things, of course, scoreboard, then you look at the turnovers. We had four, I think they had one. That's what it goes on. We had three interceptions and a fumble. They had one fumble. Right then, unfortunately, the interceptions, one time they returned them. The other time was in the end zone. The other time was the momentum shifter. We had to make sure the kids feel a little bit better. Physically, and in the physical game, we're not beat up at all after that game. You know, we're knocking on wood. We're freaking healthy still, which is great. They had some kids help tomming. There are some kids, they got some good-looking kids over there now. They had some good, strong young men and they play hard and we just kept moving the ball, you know, with the kids we have and our kids are good, strong kids doing. We moved the ball and got physical with them, so it wasn't physical. It was just a big play game. A couple of the individual stats. Loopke was 16 of 36, but he had a three-picks. 263 yards. Dunham, 22 carries for 79 yards. Taff, again, led the receivers with six catchers for 53 yards. So just want to throw some of those out there too. Well, we got the big game next week. Enough about this game. That's how you got that. I'm done with this one. It's kind of interesting there's a couple good storylines here. First off, you got the second Concordia. You're playing Concordia from Illinois. But of course, the big story is Jeff Hines, who makes it even more interesting. Jeff is trying to turn around and rebuild that program. But of course, the story goes back. He was the head coach the last four years at Lakeland. And he's here for 10 years. Yeah, 10 years old, six years prior to that. He was the assistant. So now he's coming back and it's an interesting you know, no matter what anybody says, it is an interesting little side tale here. Well, the most interesting thing is not a lot of coaches leave the school to go to another school within the conference. I don't care what level you're at. It's a great job. It just doesn't happen. Usually, coaches will leave to go to a different conference. They'll leave to go somewhere else. It's very rare that you end up having to coach against somebody that's in the league. Sometimes you play in a non-conference. Here's a guy who went from conference to stay within the conference and left somewhere else. So yeah, it's interesting in terms of three or four, taking fifth-year seniors for his classes are still here. It's because he recruited and so on. It's interesting and I'm sure anytime there's a chance kids are, some kids, it's a weird deal with kids. You don't know how they, they came here for a reason. They came here because they like late when they came because they like Coach Hines and all that stuff. So I think it'll be an interesting deal in that sense of seeing how the kids react to it and do they want to show them that, hey, we're still, you know, we're going to play hard for Lakeland and he's trying to rebuild a program because he's playing a lot of young kids on that team, you know, and they've played well in spurts and so on, but it's interesting it comes to home coming and it comes to, anything you can imagine you put this game on there and you come to, oh, did he leave, you know, did he leave on good terms, bad terms, whatever, you know, you could name a million different storylines, but all it was through Lakeland, on homecoming, you know, and see what happens. And the bottom line is really just step number seven for you guys. Yeah, you knew I'd say that. It is step seven, you know, it's step seven for us in terms of it's just a game, it's a big game for us because last time we lost, well, gosh, we came back and beat up Eureka pretty good and our kids reacted well and that's what I told them, I told them, I said, I'm going to get a little bit of a vengeance that someone must pay for that lot. Someone's got to pay for all the pain because we can say it all along, but yeah, you get rid of it but it's still going to linger, you know, you're going to get rid of it so you can go practice, get rid of the next game, but someone's got to take, someone's got to pay the price for playing a game we could have won, not should have by any mean, so we could have won. We had the opportunities to win now we got to forget that and take it out where's the conference stack up now, where are you guys at? Concordia is 3-0, we're 2-1, Aurora is 2-1, McMurray, I just missed that last score, they're either 1-2 or 2-1, and that's so they're 2-1, so we're 2-1, McMurray and Aurora are 2-1, Concordia, Wisconsin is 3 and the rest of the teams are either 1-2 or 0-3. The tough part is Concordia from Wisconsin unfortunately has already played Aurora, you know, and you hope you hope that they stumble somewhere but I mean if we stumble again it doesn't matter what they do so we can't stumble again, we got to play well and get this thing rolling for the last four games, it really gets to blow up this last part of the season, see how good we can be I told the kid I said good's not good enough anymore, you are good let's decide to be great let's decide to play great in the last four games, instead of good we talked about Concordia, we talked about Heinz you talked about Heinz that's because it's your buddy he sends me some emails every once in a while he gives me the although we're going to take a beating his kids play hard they really do they play I think 17 freshmen probably and his kids play hard you watch tape and they play well they do a lot of defense which gives you headaches because they put a lot of people in the box they're putting pressure and they do those kind of things it's not like they sit and say we're going to take a beating because we're not as physical because we're younger no the kids don't give up they play hard and he still has the same offense the chuck and duck offense anytime you got a team we'll throw it all over the place they make a big play here and there and they can make plays you just got to make them pay for trying to I think I bring it up especially because I know a lot of people are going to come back and want to see this quote unquote new head coach or this new team and it's not a new team but the new error I guess in terms of offense and defense things are a little bit different I think they want to see how these kids play and I think we've done renovations of stadium which makes it I think people enjoy coming back to it and I'm going to make it important for those kids to realize a lot of people come back and have a good weekend but they come back to see they're proud if Lakeland wins and it's a big thing if they went home coming and they can go back yeah we took it to somebody that means a lot so for our kids it does mean a lot because they're here because a lot of other people were here before them well we're getting assigned already we've got to wrap it up I've got a couple other announcements to make so thanks for joining us again today Jim and then of course next we'll be back again with Jim I'm going to go into college by the score of 3 to 2 Mark Holes doing a nice job at the men's team they started out slowly and involved to a 6 and 7 and 1 team they were 2 and 6 so you can see how hot they're getting currently undefeated in conference play the women's volleyball team coach by Chad Treiber doing a great job they're 13 and 11 right now I believe they started out approximately 3 and 9 so he's got a nice young team that he's molded into a championship contender in the LMC so if you get a chance come on out and make sure 1 p.m. So we'll see you next time on the locker room. Thanks for joining us.