 Hi everybody and welcome to the Lake and Lock Room. Once again I'm John Weber joined today by Jim Zabrowski, the head football coach at Lakeland College. Jim is usually on the show, we want to get right to it. No mess around this set, we only got a half hour, we got a lot to fit in. Boy, you guys really smoke Greenville, you made them feel even greener than they were. Sixty-three to ten, what a blowout. Yeah, it was a good game. Long trip, you know, seven, eight hours down there. It's kind of in the St. Louis area, so our fans at home kind of worked through it. Yeah, about 40 minutes north, a little northeast of St. Louis. It was a long trip, we left Friday afternoon, got there late Friday night. You never know how your kids are going to react. I think it's going to be a little sluggish. We stopped for practice on the road, just got out and walked around and did a couple of things. We came out in the morning, our games were at noon because the time changes a little earlier. It was their senior day. Just never know what's going to happen. Our kids came out smoking. They came out and we, as they used to say, we went right at it. We got right to it and the kids put exception on the first half. All three phases of the game, we caused turnover on kick-offs. We scored every drive in the first quarter. I think by the time the smoke cleared it was either twenty-eight or thirty-four nothing after the first quarter or something such as that. And the rest was history, as they say, I guess. But the kids played exception on the first half. That's a neat situation for you because you guys go out twenty-eight and nothing at the first quarter. You're able to start even working some of your twos in there right away in the second quarter. Right, and working some kids in and just, we tried to, the tough thing is sometimes a situation such as this, when you're playing so well and they're struggling a little bit, you're on the road, you're only taking a certain number of kids. So unlike our home game, we had eighty-five, eighty-six, eighty-seven kids dressed. Here you're only taking fifty-five kids or so, or fifty-five of them. So you're going to play your twos somewhere along the line but you're not going to go to, there are no three. You're only going to take twos. So now I'll say to you the situation where your kids, our twos aren't too bad. And our running backs are pretty darn good and they're getting better and they're all freshman. And we just started rolling. And the third quarter we really got started raining, it rained all game. Second quarter started coming out a little bit. Third and fourth quarter kind of rained steady. So we're just going to grind it out. Well now we got a bunch of big three-hour-pound kids pushing around man. Our young running backs played well and we just, we rolled. That was a great, it was a great, great game really, really was. Well one thing you have to be proud of, the rain was definitely a factor in the game. They had six fumbles and you guys recovered them all. But you guys really did a good job. You fumbled twice but you only lost one of them. Yeah, we lost one fumble. We had a fumble snap and we recovered that. That was in the fourth quarter of that third quarter back. Kenny Grande, you had a great game. He was from St. Louis area so it was good to let him loose a little bit. He fumbled, he fumbled down again. He rolled and he fumbled I think in the fourth quarter. It was the first time we lost the ball. At the end of the half which I don't even count as a turn over to Hail Mary. We're just throwing it down there to see if we could make a score or not. I think it was 37-nothing at that time. We're on a 35-yard line. We just threw one up to see if we could make a play or not and they ended up picking it off in the end. So really a 6-1 really in turnovers. In a game like that when you're playing a team that you think you might on paper be better than they have some really special skilled kids but in theory with our size and our strength, we thought if we played well we'd have a good chance to play, beat them pretty well and then they start turning them all over and we're not turning it over at all and we're grinding out yards on the ground and then that game gets kind of not ugly in our eyes but good in our eyes and ugly in their eyes. Grinding out is exactly a great word to use. I mean you guys had 381 yards of rushing offense compared to theirs 96 but you guys had 588 yards of total offense and 207 through the air. You guys held them to 262 on the air. Right which is really good when you're here. You had 500 range, you played exceptional on offense then you're almost in that 600 range. We had 120 yards of rush game called back in the fourth quarter so that could have been a really, I mean 600 yards is scary. You know in a game, I don't care who you're playing. So that's great and holding them to 262 was good. They got a couple, they're running backs really good. They hate to tell their guys out of coach but if I had that, I'd be running him about 35 times a game. He was a senior, he was a freak. He's really a great running back and they just don't have the cast up front I don't think to use them as well but he ended up getting 100 yards or something. Actually he had nine rushes for 77 yards but he had an 8.6 yards per carry. Why wouldn't you give him the ball? Thank goodness he didn't. Thank goodness they kept trying to throw it. They kept trying to throw it here and there while the clock's not moving, they're throwing in completions but we did a great job on the ground. That was our best. We played some of our team that we beat pretty well and we didn't have as clean a game I guess you say or as error free type of game. There weren't a lot of minus rush plays. There weren't a lot of where we were 3rd and 15 and we had to make a play to get the first one. It was just bam, bam, full backs, half back and Jeff Taft really started the Jeff Taft score 3 touchdowns the first 18 minutes of the game I think and after that it was just a grind amount. There were some people getting punished out there in a physical sense of the word playing clean, hard, focused, what I want those kids to do and they really went at it. Well generally we cap all the scores but I don't know if we're going to do that today. We'll mention a few of the scores. You already mentioned Jeff Taft. He had 3 touchdowns on the day and a couple were nice and a 40 yard touchdown. He was still going to highlight the second part of the show but he played well. He didn't catch a ball. He caught a ball after the first quarter and a half. He might have got all that stuff in a quarter and a half of football. And you were finished with 8 catches for 125 yards. Which happened probably in the first 24 minutes of the 23 minutes of the game. Which I really think about that. And he did plus he had I'm guessing 60, 70 yards of puttering time. He had a great day and he only played really two and a half quarters total. He played great. Marcus Denham scored a touchdown. I can kind of recap for you I think. Marcus Denham gained 100 yards on the ground. He only played two and a half quarters. Is that his first 100 yard game? I think first or second. First or second. But he was a, you know we were talking about that in terms of looking ahead to the end of the season. When you start mentioning, well you get to that all conference stuff and so on. He, besides the games that have been close and competitive, he's rarely played more than a half or two and a half quarters. And he's getting 89 yards. And he only played two and a half quarters. He played the first series of the second half and that's all. So he gained 100 yards and a little over a half. I think, I gotta go back and look at the total stats but I think he's over 600 yards now for the season. Yeah, give or take a little bit. And you take away his first game. Nick Hunter played more. Second game, he didn't play much. Oshkosh was really his first game where he plays on six games. Regardless of what his average per game is, because that's kind of, but when he's played he's a 100 yard rusher for us. And we really never put him into the fourth. Aurora played a little bit of the fourth quarter. The rest of those games, besides the quarter of Wisconsin, he's been out for the third quarter. So he's been really pretty on the good side. That's nice to see because you've been talking about his steady progression that he's had throughout the entire season. And you're expecting big things from him throughout the next couple of years. Yeah, and we are. I think he's going to be, he keeps working out in the weight room and it does well academically and he could be a really special cat. And the great thing about him is that there's two young guys, Marcus Green and Aaron Berry played really well behind them. Marcus had a good number of yards and they had a couple of carries at the end. They're both freshmen. We throw halfbacks out there. It goes freshman, freshman, freshman right now. Eric Fritz is a senior who has had a knee problem. He scored at the end of the game, which was great to see. But those three top halfbacks are freshmen and all our fullbacks are coming back. I think Travis scored early in the second quarter, first quarter. Travis Jervis had a touchdown. Marcus Denham had at least one. He had two, yeah. He had two. Jeff Taff had three. Kenny Grundy had one. Eric Fritz had one. And our defense recovered a fumble in the end zone prior to that eighth or ninth touchdown. Just sounds good to say that. Eighth touchdown. We missed two extra points. I think we kicked a field goal or two. Yeah, we can't forget Gerald Starner, as you just mentioned. Yes. He scored a lot of points. 20-air field. Yeah. Obviously extra points, et cetera, throughout the day. Right. I think that Eric Fritz is kind of a similar heart and soul of your team. He mentioned him. He got him in, got him a touchdown. Why don't you tell us a little about his background? The amazing thing about that play or about that, his whole deal was, he came in and it was him, Nick Hunter, who was a junior. Eric Fritz was a senior who was happy because when he played high school here at Howard's Grove, they were a run-oriented team and it was just kind of north-south. He's not a burner. He's a physical kid. He's tough. He's a great attitude kid. He's what you want in a football player. All of a sudden he hurts his knee in our first, in our squad scrimmage on a Sunday. And I thought it was just a, at least he limped off. I'm like, oh, that's probably just, hopefully just a sprain or a stretch or whatever. All of a sudden it's ACL done. Well, he says, you know, for any lack of better training, he says, screw it. I'm not going to lose this season. He gets a brace. He waits a couple of weeks. He puts a brace on. He has no ACL. This young man is playing football with his knee. One of his knees has no, really no ACL left. It's wasted. And he's playing and he's on special teams for us now. He's on kickoff coverage, getting down there and making plays. Heard his knee has a cordial annoyance. He got a couple of carries though. Heard his knee, again, on kickoff. Thought he was, you know, didn't play last week. And all of a sudden, went back this week to get that thing. Rehab did. Went back out there and he knows the situation. Now he knows, he's camping around, but he's playing so hard. He still has a great job and kickoff team. Well, in that game, it's the fourth quarter. I played the three young guys and Eric, of course, Travis has a special team. I said, Eric, you know, let's go. He gets in there, first plays in there, 20 yard run, 20 yard run touchdown. And he comes off and here's a young man who knows if he was healthy, he'd be playing. I mean, he'd be playing a lot. He comes off not unhappy because he only got one carry. He comes and hugs me. Thanks, coach. Thanks so much for that. Just thanks so much for giving me in. And that's why I almost started crying thinking there's a kid who really should, could be playing a ton more if he was healthy and he's just happy and he got that carry. And I'm just like, oh, that's what you want your team to get to where those kids don't care who plays as long as they're winning, as long as they're scoring, as long as we're playing well. He's happy. And of course he's frustrated because he can't, because he has no ACL. I mean, I'd be front. Most guys would be in surgery two months ago. And you're right. I told him, I said, if he ever wanted to come back and coach, if he stays in a serbian works, after he graduates, I said, he's got a job with me. He's got a job right now. He can go and we have enough coach where we can move people around. He'd be coached with us automatically. Well, it's kind of like what I heard this weekend. I was watching the Michigan State Michigan game because I couldn't make it down to St. Louis. Because you're sought. You didn't want to. If the other guy was here, you probably wouldn't have. See, we're not tight enough. We're not tight enough yet. All right. Mike's coming off. Anyway, so John El-Smith, he's talking about, there's no, you know, there's no eye and team. They need an unselfish attitude. I know last year in Michigan State, they had pictures of, you know, Charlie Rogers, whatever his name is, the great wide-rider singer and their smoke or their quarterback. We took it off and just said, we're going to make generic pictures and stuff like that. And I think that's what we're seeing with your team, an unselfish attitude. I'm not worried about you guys reflective in the record. Now, all of a sudden, they're probably going to finish eight and two of the best records since 1997. You can't go, you can't go there. We're seven and two right now. I'll give you that. At least you know what we know exactly where you're at. And I think that's because that they don't care who gets the ball. They're just worried about, you know, taking care of business, the process, you know, hey, we're going to work as hard as we can. We'll let the things work themselves out. We'll let the wins and losses. But I'm not going to worry about, hey, I scored three touchdowns today, or I caught 10 passes. I think what happened last year, I think the big thing was the biggest position that had the most, would have the most trouble was wide receiver because you come from an office that's a five wide, here's guys that are catching. Now, the funny thing is when this whole thing gets done, there's a good chance we'll have more passing yards than they did last year. Potentially. Potentially. Potentially. But they're not going to be the little rinky dink receivers catching 40 balls for five yards of catch. And we throw, we, you know, we throw it. And I think Jeff Tavern and I was 44 catches and has a ton of yards. Sean Barron has, I don't know if that 30-35 range, but he has a ton of yards. Maybe 30 yards. He has a ton of. Well, he had a nice game too. Four catches or four yards. Yeah. Right. And he had, you know, after coming off his 170 yard game last week. So it's going to be neat to see, we'll have more touchdown passes probably, more yards throwing. But just those kids had those kids had a bite a little bit and say now, is winning more important, or at least buying, because they didn't know if they're going to win the new system, more important. Or as me, myself getting 40 catches is more important. That's not going to break. Yeah, we got to break it. Get in the signs, brother. We got to go. All right, all right. Well, stay with us. We'll be right back with more of the Lakeland locker room. I love the challenge of computers. Not that I have much time with these little guys and my job, but when my wife went back to school, I thought, why can't I? Certain things in life demand my attention, but a new career in computer science deserves my attention. An evening class is the time I life in knots, thanks to a flexible, easy to manage schedule that allows me to balance work, school, and the twins. Evening classes that meet once a week, that's the easy part. You know, we sing for millions of girls, but helping out in schools, that's the real deal, baby. I'm the Q one, you know what I'm saying? Have you ever been backstage before? I think you'll find that gravity is key in what I do. Just was one, but now it's you. Hi everybody, and welcome back to the Lakeland locker room. I'm John Weber, joined today by Jim Zabrowski, the head football coach at Lakeland. Jim, we're just talking about your great start here. Seven and two, first chance, two guys, first opportunity now to finish with the best record since 1997. So it's been quite a span here for six years or so. One thing is that we don't have the short five-yard quick hits anymore, and it's kind of fun to watch because we haven't seen that in the past. You know, Luke never threw the ball down a few, and the guys might actually end up with more yards on less attempts. But you know, this kid, here's a kid who has a cannon of an arm, but we never got to see it. And sometimes, even without the best technique, he throws a ball. It's so nice and easy and fluid. He throws a ball 40, 50 yards in the air. Yeah, we talked about this with me and him and I said, it was more get the ball out of your hand as quickly as possible. There's a lot of timing stuff, and the coaches didn't care what they looked like, just get the ball out. A lot of quarterbacks don't have great technique. You see them in the NFL, you see them in college, but they get the ball to the right people quickly and so on. So last year it was getting the ball to those guys quickly and trying to make them break tackles or we're more of a vertical pushing type passing attack. And we really worked hard with Brandon. He's got his quarterbacks and his feet get spread out sometimes and he over-strides and that's where he gets a little messed up and we were really hard with his feet and keeping his elbow up and sometimes he could drop down and he's kind of a gunslinger when I got it kind of a sidearm kid and he's too big to do that. He's 6'4 and when you start dropping down a sidearm you become 6'4 and you want to be taller when you're a quarterback so he's really in terms of technique and so on because I was a competitor and a gamer and a hard-nosed kid but he's just having fun I think because you said we're throwing more vertical shots and what helps that is you get a running game you get a running game you get people into the box and all of a sudden you have Sean Barron, Jeff Taff, James Hayes and Courtney Galin you have a good career receivers and I think like you talked about before realize if I get this shot we're not going to throw the ball 82 times a game we're going to run the ball we're going to play action we're still going to throw but trust me you're not going to get as many catches but you'll get as many yards in this system if you just buy into and what's happening now these guys become our best blockers right now Jeff Taff and Sean Barron the two receivers who have the most yards, most catches so they've totally bought in this and he said hey I'm going to block and they love the kids the ball didn't do it and you watch highlights it's Sean Barron one day Jeff Taff the other Marcus Denham Brent Lupke you know tight ends catching the ball Jen those guys Travis Jervis and you don't know who's going to get that on defense half time you have no clue who's making the play just because it's 11 guys running around real fast for example this weekend Sam Scheringer led your team with only seven tactics and they were all over and there was guys on the ball no that happened and we recovered fumble I don't think they even know who recovered fumble but they have definitely bought in and do it and there is not we don't have the one now we're just pretty good and we have some kids that are pretty good and we're not not even that fact and in this league right now you look at it you know the two teams that are playing the best is Concordia and ourselves and unfortunately I don't like basketball and baseball but it does work you know whatever this system is it works we believe in it and we're going to play hard because the results have been you know success one quadruple over time quadruple over time loss and Wisconsin game in Concordia where we just turn the ball over too much played well you can't just turn the ball over well let's go ahead and take some of the highlights we'll see an example this is first drive Marcus Town up the middle for a touchdown big boys up front that's what you saw all day just a wall of bodies and that's great this is Travis Gervis scoring the second touchdown or the first they confused in those two here's Jeff Tad we don't even call this play we just throw an uncovered receiver and Jeff breaks it for 50 with Sean and James doing a great job blocking that's not a called play that's just an audible line of script here around the seven-yard line same thing they don't get tight enough to Jeff it's like if you're not going to get tight enough to Jeff here we mix up our kickoff sometimes we kick it deep here we just pooch kick it just so they have pretty good returners well this guy has trouble catching it because it's raining windy out we get it back and you see there's eight white jerseys on there and they're fighting in there now it's get the rock out the scrum the exactly our kickoff team is doing a really great job they joke around and call themselves a pain train like the Reebok commercial with the office manager and here's fourth and 15 web like this fourth and 15 we never pun anyway brand up bull up no no stride jeff tap millfield took it open touchdown he has feet he had to run his feet here's Kenny running the flat St. Louis boy making a play and that's great because it's Greenville's right by and he's running people over in truck and people he gained like 80 yards rushing 75 yards rushing did a great job and defense they we just made plays all day all day there's a sack offense again here's James Hayes catching a slant slant pass ended the half actually got us a position Chuck went in the end zone here's defense here's Vig he's played outstanding all year Vig is just around the ball here's interception off a tip pass added to start the second half which got us momentum to finish this game off here's Sean Barron oh I missed that one that's I'm sorry that's Markestown I'm grading 14 yards on the run up the middle again with our big boys great in hand pick up front they just played arrow line played great here's a sack they're trying to throw up their own inch line here's the touchdown by committee okay they couldn't tell who got it but it was eight guys on top of the ball and unfortunately you see our guy Leonard Shane and Shane kind of got dinged a little bit but he's okay so don't think anything happened poorly he's okay here's fourth down the green ball somewhere in the fourth quarter they catch it there's a run and there's just a sit out there our defense does a great job with the sack and it's just it was a great funnest I told our old line I told our old line coach to sell out our old line coach said the funnest thing about this game obviously was we were just there was just a wall of white jerseys and our running backs were just gas and naturally fun to watch because these kids they were blitz I mean green balls blitzed we were waxing people and doing a great job defense we got the ball back so fast so many times because I think it was 37-7 half time I told our ones men we need to get the ball back immediately defensively offense we need to get the ball score it's out of reach probably at 37-7 I'm always one of those guys if you get into the 40s shows kind of over we get in there the ones that are done after that series they score we make a 44-7 and the rest is you know 63 6-3-10 63-10 block city but you know one thing we always talk about we kind of recap some of these we always recap the stats just so people don't have a good idea we mentioned your total offense of yards 588 during the 81 yards rushing 207 passing 18-27 for your quarterbacks one couple stats that really stand out too your time of possession 37-11 to 22-49 you guys really dominated there 31 first downs which I believe is a season high and also a lot of first downs and of course one thing that you guys had is only two puns which is good but probably the only probably the only negative stat I see over here is 15 penalties is that right 15 penalties I know that's pretty dang high we are you know what's so sad when I came here you know what and that number probably is correct I hate to say that when I got here I said I came from disciplined people and there's a fine line there's certain types of penalties you can't live with you know the cheap shots the balls and so on we occasionally get an off-size penalty that we just are being aggressive yeah but then obviously we'll miss a snap count those we have to correct and we get better all of a sudden we'll do something not very smart and we'll correct those that's coaching that's us we have to do a better job with that but then these penalties we had one or two face masses they reached instead of it wasn't anything he called and I talked to him he wasn't bad that kid was just excited turned to our kids and made a gesture like great job and he thought we just didn't want the game to get out of hand I'm like fella our kids don't talk we don't do that it's those but you're right we laugh we call ourselves the Oakland Raiders in the 80s 15th fella and here's a weird part you look at the teams sometimes have the most penalty yards and it's like you said you're pushing this line of aggressiveness and sometimes you tow it too much and you go over it and now you can't the holding if it's a stupid holding calling your reach in some of them you got to correct those code we have to that's us offside I'm more mad at myself because often I say we jump offside we're not disciplined but the other one is they call it back like I said there's 120 yards of rush game called back on two pounds they call it two holding calls one we think was the other one our kid got tackled our full back we play fit you got tackled the holding call so I think sometimes the game start getting a little crazy a ref start trying to keep the game in charge but yeah you're right I don't know that it's not something putting a resume you guys are only one category it's the only thing in the whole sheet that you guys lost in that's impressive you guys pretty much motivated that game and you're right the biggest thing is turn over margin when it's 6-2 and really 6-1 with a Hail Mary I mean you're plus 4 and we're top if I'm wrong I apologize I think we are now top 20 in the country or top 15 or 20 country and turn over margin teams are probably playing pretty well just such as we are and we are playing pretty well the great thing is that after the Concordia was constantly lost the kids just kind of picked it up and since then it's been 49-nothing 34-10 63-10 and hopefully we can end it well at Benedict which is another road game which is kind of not an overnighter so you gotta leave really early and it's gonna be one of those another but our kids you watch our kids I let it rain because I want our kids to realize it doesn't matter what happens to us rains no I'm not gonna get upset if it rains people think hey you're a quote-unquote offensive guy you won't I don't care it rains no you gotta play in it so I have fun with the kids buying it and I want to make sure they have fun football the heart support like any sport isn't you want to have fun you want to be out if Concordia, Wisconsin slips this weekend from Murray they probably won't but if they do and we win we tie for the conference we won't go to the playoffs but we tie for the conference which is an outstanding an outstanding year and if we get to 8-2 well you know what I look back at those two games and I'll never look back and say we could have but we did at that moment they beat us but it was a great both great games and you gotta go we gotta go from there you got about a minute we have less than two left in the show what's gonna happen of course this game is down and a while it's our last game it's senior day hopefully we play as well like we did Greenville's senior day and Brew and their senior day last game it was emotional in terms of how are your kids gonna react when those kids know those seniors 14 seniors we have so you gotta let that go and I was it's not it's not your last game until the game's over play the game any game can be your last game in case of injury or whatever and what they're doing they see how good we can be they're starting to really feel like we're great at this moment there's not many teams in this country that fear at our level to say I'd be afraid to go play or fear let's trap it up and go and see what happens so we'll say I know we're gonna go but just remember next week where we at Webb why Illinois and then after the hometown hopefully with a victory where are we number 10 where are we at Monday of course alright well Jim thanks again for joining us today we've got about 30 seconds to recap here again the muskies pound Greenville 63-10 move the record to 7-2 they're chasing the best record since 1997 when the muskies finish 10-0 the muskies are predicted to finish 8-2 because he doesn't like to hear that but they should be 8-2 after next week the women's soccer team of course won the conference title for the second straight year in a row they have an automatic bit excuse me an automatic buy right now they're waiting to see who they're gonna play the first round game they finish third in conference but they beat Marinetta for nothing in the first game they're gonna play I believe on Wednesday now for their second game in the semifinals and see what happens there they have a good chance of winning as well women's volleyball team won the conference title for the third straight year they finish underfeated 12-0 coach Schreiber doing a great job coach Cole I should have mentioned for the soccer team doing a fine job as well of course but the big news is of course next Monday we're gonna be shooting this show from Lakeland college it's gonna be lots of fun drink prices happy hour that's right show up look out but again thanks for joining us the muskies win 63-10 we'll see you next week from Lakeland college thanks for joining us again on the lake of locker room