 Hi everybody and welcome to the Lakin Lock Room. Once again I'm John Weber joined today by Jim Zabrowski, the head football coach at Lakin College. Jim, as usual on the show, we like to get right to it. Congratulations again on another big win. You guys spank McMurray 53-7. That was a good game. McMurray is not as strong as they've been in the past. We felt that way a little bit, we never know, because they were living on mystique and they haven't lost a conference game in two years. And they were trying to see, hey, even though we haven't been playing as well, but one, they're still two and one, I think, coming to the game. I think they were saying, hey, we're McMurray, you know, people still have to respect us for who we are and not losing a game in two years. We made the playoffs last two years and I think our kids kind of took that as, hey, someone's got to break this thing and someone's got to, let's see what we can do. And a great thing when we jumped out really early, got the lead, got them in a bind, I think, and then kind of took it away from there. And then I just started steamrolling. Yeah, you guys really did jump out early, 20 to nothing at the end of the first quarter. Is that something you obviously hoped to do that, but you have something that you saw on tape that were like, hey, we can get these guys right away? Yeah, you know, we thought we could, the scary thing was we thought we could take a couple shots vertically on them and get a couple quick scores. The sad part was we threw three interceptions in the first half and we still went in 32, nothing a half time. So we took some chances. We felt like we could run on them. We just thought we were bigger than they were up front. We thought our kids are starting to come around in the run game and we really thought we could pile on them. But early in the game, we wanted to spread them out, do some of the different things, get Jeff Taft involved, get some of our speedier kids involved. And we just misconnected a little bit, but when they did get an opportunity, we did make them pay. And so we thought we could get out, you know, and we thought if we got out, I thought if we got out on these kids, I think that they don't handle adversity very well. I think they never have had to in years past. I think if you get on them and make them feel like, oh, we're not the same McMurray, and maybe the score could start rolling and our defense play outstanding, scored a touchdown early again in this game for us, got it even rolling faster, and then they didn't have much of an answer. So really, I think it was a big defensive deal in that first half. We just got to get the ball back. We had so many opportunities in the first half. We never punted. We had five touchdowns and three turnovers. We had eight possession in the first half, never punted. The score could have actually been a little crazier just by the way the game worked out. Well, you said this isn't the same McMurray. This certainly isn't the same Lakeland either. You guys off to a 4-0-1 start for the first time in a long time, obviously. The last few years, we've kind of been battling 500 at this point in the season already. But I think another thing, too, is that this is really a statement game for you, because last week, or people were saying, hey, there are three and one going into this game, and played Oshkosh in four over times, but that was their one good game. Carthage has always been a close game. He had a couple blocks and stuff with Tri-State and Eureka. But now, this game really sends a message to everybody, hey, watch out, we're for real. Yeah, I think it does, too, John. I think our kids, maybe even our kids a little bit, we always talk about being good and going step by step. People get sick of the cliches I use. I'm not saying crazy stuff. We're getting one step at a time. This is step five for us. We're three and one. The reason each game is a little more important is because we keep making it more important because we keep winning or playing well. But I said, we make enough mistakes to keep improving every week. So there's so much improvement we still need to make. But I think you're right in the statement concept, McMurray's still McMurray. And regardless of their four and six this year, five and five, whatever they end up, it's still their first loss in two years. It was still a kid. I think we won't be in them once the last five or six years or seven years. So it was kind of like to say the rest of the league and the rest of the, or the rest of the division three football, hey, we can play some football. You know, we're pretty good. How good, unless you have to be determined. But I think this was a game where everyone else that looks at the score and says, wow, they can play. Oshkosh wasn't a fluke. You know, Carthage wasn't a whatever. They played Oshkosh well. Oshkosh just beat Stout who still ranked the top 25 in the country. So I had to play the Oshkosh game. I felt good. And you and me talked about that because we lost the game. But being in the CCIW, it's seen a lot of really, really good division three scum going, Oshkosh is good. Their front seven is outstanding on both sides of the ball. And we had a chance to win that game. You had one play away from one. Right, one play away. So I kind of said, well, if we can just not stumble off that loss and just really realize that it was a great football game, that we can build out that game really against momentum. I told the kids, if we play well, opportunities like this exist for us to make a score look, I guess, you know, a big margin. That's just a combination of other teams folding sometime. Defense playing outstanding and the offense capitalizing. Well, let's talk about the offense right away. Marcus Dunham is a guy we talked about. He said he's kind of a quick back. He's got to put some weight on as he goes on. But he's the guy that you're going to count on in the years ahead, but he really had a big game for himself. He had somewhere between 18 and 22 carries for 120 yards somewhere around there. Had a couple of times. I think he had two touchdowns. And when you watch them highlights later in the show, he was carrying some people. He was making people miss. He's a very good football player. And we have put him in as you were driving up. I mean, he's 152 pounds. You're throwing him in against some guys that are huge and he just keeps playing and he picks up. He did a lot of great things. So he got us going, you know, scoring the ATR touchdown first drive of the game and did a really good job for us. He's a freshman and another guy we're going to mention is a freshman too. He scored the next touchdown. You know, Van De Leuven from Sheboyan Falls there. The guy we mentioned several times throughout the year. He had a 55 yard interception. Yeah, that's the second time in a row he scored. You know, he's part of, he moved off. That's made him get a little more production. But he picked up an interception. They ran a little screen, picked it off, took it to the house. The scary thing was later in the game, he almost picked up a fumble and scored. So what that shows you is he's around the football. He's a smart kid. He's a smart football kid. He's a great high school program at Sheboyan Falls. He understands, you know, winning football. He understands what it takes to win. He's done a great job for us. Now, I got to bring it up. The only draw back. Here we go. The first two scores, unfortunately, the field point after Tim needs some work. Right. That's an understatement. We missed the first one. We had a backup snapper in. Man, who's our snapper? Been a little banged up and stuff. We tried to take him off a couple of things. I don't know if it's a combination of the snout, I watched the tapes. It was a low kick. Our right side got a little pushback. A combination of a bunch of things that's bad. So we missed that one. Got the second one blocked. Pissed off. I think I can say that. Pissed off. So we ended up going for two the next three times. And get it once. Should have got the next two times. But then after that, you know, we made every extra point after that. But yeah, that's a very scary issue. It's a very, you know, it's not so much the kicker. I think it's just a combination of everybody. We just got to keep getting. We get good and all of a sudden we fall back. And we get good. You know, we just got to get more consistent. One thing you keep mentioning is the balance. We've talked about balance in so many different phases. The offense, the defense, the pass and the run. Also here though, one thing you've talked about is having the quick drive versus the long drive. On the next drive, you guys had a nice 10 play, 95 yard drive, which balanced out your quick scores. And that made it 20-nuff. Yeah, that was a nice play. We got help by a penalty. They had a, we were on the 6th yard. I mean, a third and 16 or something passing a parents' call. And after that, that kind of takes us to, I think you can drive the length. I mean, we were pinned. Five yard line. And we take it 95 yards. That's not a very good feeling for the defense. We just got roped for 95 yards. And like you said, then we come back a few years later and have a four-play drive. So I think you're right. It is good. We have the ability to grind it if we have to. You know, if we need to. And we also have the ability to, you better be ready because it will strike you fast and get 75 before you know what will happen. And you've got so many options too. You've obviously talked about denim. And the next possession early in the second quarter or your next score, I should say, loopy or quarterback runs in it from 38 yards out. Right, right. We run option. And it's funny because he's a 6-5, 6-4 kid. You don't see a lot of 6-4 kids running option. Made a great cut. He cut all the way across the field and scored. So that's another now team that people prepare while all the quarterbacks are going to run too. And he has been running. The problem is we've been taking a sack or two of his shirts is rushing total or rushing total. This game we only had two sacks plus yards, plus yards. I had like 10 taken away. So we need our quarterback in our office. We need our quarterback to gain. I told him we needed between 50 and 100 yards from you rushing. It's just how our office is set up. We've got scramble, design runs. We have to get the quarterback yardage. And Brent being a 50-year senior now, he's a guy that can carry the team and carry the pile. Or maybe a Marcus is just learning how to do it. Yeah, exactly right. And in this game they're doing, I mean Brent's 230 or whatever he is on 6-4. He can carry it now. Well, the next score right before half time, you guys scored the 5-6 team marker to make it 32-nothing. This time it was a receiver, Jeff Taff. Again, the poor man Barry Sanders. There you go. And he's good. He's good. He makes people miss. He caught it. We ran a three-vertical concept and he took the middle great throw by Brent. After coming off a bat, throw the last run, strokes it in there. I think it's third down and 10 at that time or something. Bang, touchdown. That's around 40 yards, around 35 yards. And he's a special kid out there. And that was a 61-yard touchdown pass from Mookie. And again, that was a quick play. And three plays, 61 yards covered only 1-15 off the clock. Yeah, so you said it's a long drive, short drive. We hopefully have the ability to do it both. Now you guys go into half time. We talk about this every week. Now it's a little different scenario here because you all talk about that 30-point barrier. If you get past 30, then you really got to pretty much have the game one. I agree with you. This is 32. This is just a football coach mentality. It should have been 35. 32 just gives them, if you think about it, it's four touchdowns but four 2-point. It's a four-score game. You know that's really nasty. It's tough to get four 2-point. I'm not even that bad. But you're still four. You're always looking to get that one more score ahead. So I told them, hey, they're the defending champs. They're going to go in there. The coaches are going to rant and rave and say, we need to stop. We must get a stop. We get a stop offense. We're going to grind it and just try to break their will. I just called a will-breaker drive. We need a will-breaker drive to put this thing out of reach. And it happened. We gave up, I think, two first-downs to make memory. They punt. I think our next drive, we might have thrown it once or maybe not, no times. And it was, I don't know how many-play drive and 10 or 12-play drive. Actually it was 13-play. I'm not sure if we threw the ball in that drive. And it was grinding out a 70 or 75, 80-yard drive. And right then it shows over. What you do is you eat up clock. You shorten the game and you just go up by 39 points. Yeah, and you guys really did shorten. You guys basically up one quarter of the whole second half. Took seven minutes and 25 seconds off the clock. So you guys end up 39-nothing. You're going into the late in the third quarter and finally McMurray gets on the board. Right, and the funny thing about the ironic thing about that was we had a mixture of ones and twos in there. Because 39-nothing, you're pretty comfortable and out of five minutes left in the quarter. Unless you totally self-destroyed, you got to feel pretty good about life. And so we were mixing in ones and twos, which is good because young kids play in town and we give up a score on our defense. First touch on giving up in the last two home games. So they're not happy about life. So we, I think we don't score the defense. I owe a coach Crete, our defense coordinator, and make sure you get the young guys and he goes, hey, I started to want to go back in there and finish with a good taste in their mom. That happens in the next play. You'll see it on the highlights. We just crushed their full back fumble with ball right back. And we end up scoring and making 46 to 7 or whatever. But that's how our defense mentality is now. They're not so happy about, yeah, they knew we were going to win a 39-nothing. But giving up a touchdown ticks them off. They don't like giving up scores. So they want to go back out there and end it feeling good about their side of the ball. And they did a great job. McMurray being McMurray, the one thing you guys want to know about their running game. I mean, they have Nehemiah Parkers. They have another good back as well. I mean, they only had about 30, 40 yards on a day. Yeah, and that was a couple of sacks helped out. But yeah, they didn't rush the ball very well. And we make, they, I think they were playing their backup quarterback too for some reason. So making that kid throw was always going to be in our favor. And that kid does, once he gets going, he's pretty good. We don't let him get going. And that's just not a standing job by the defense. I stand corrected. They had 42 attempts, they had a couple at the end. No, they had a couple at the end. They did nothing on the ground. And again, nothing in the air as well. I mean, you guys just gave up 163 yards of total offense on the day. Which is outstanding. And outstanding effort by all 11 of those guys. And all the guys that played. Great job of just doing what they needed to do. Yeah, you guys aren't going to lose too many games when you give up 163 and you guys have 507. That's a good combination. That's a good combination. Well, you guys go on the fourth quarter. You're feeling pretty good. 39-7, we got a minute here before a break. At this point, you got to feel really good too. Because now the injury factor becomes kind of secondary. You start thinking about, hey, who can I rest? Or who can I get out? Exactly, right. We just put our twos in. And when scores become lopsided, it's a mixture of the other teams saying, I don't want to be here anymore. And your twos going in there and saying, hey, I'm not just going in there for mop-up time. I'm going in there to make myself better and show the coaches that I want to be one of the ones. We go out there and one of the drives was a one-play drive to Aaron Berry, our backup halfback who's earned more and more playing time at Gifford Moosburg. Terrific young man. Runs hard. We gash his 16-hour touchdown. So those twos go in there. And that's a combination of what happened. Those twos go in there. You're resting your starters. We played four quarterbacks again. We played 10, 12 running backs. All our receivers, I think, got in. And you're right. It's a great combination. And you can rest those kids a little bit. Get them healthy for next week. Or we get the sign here. We got to go to Bregar to come back and talk about the last score and then talk about your upcoming opponent. Stay with us. We're in Bregar and more in the Lake of Lackeroom. 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 at Lakeland doesn't tie my 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. Thanks everybody and welcome back to Lakeland Lackeroom. Once again, I'm John Weber, joined today by Jim Zabrowski. He's the guy to say we just, right time, right place, to get a nice commercial here for Lakeland Lackeroom. I like that. That's how it should be. That's lakeland.edu. Check us out. So anyways, but getting back to the game here, you guys, obviously you're now up 40-67. You guys just mentioned, or you just mentioned Aaron Berry, actually scoring the last touch on the game. We made it 53-7. One thing that's pretty cool though, you talk about Van De Leu from Falls. You talk about Berry from Wolfsburg. You've talked about Sam Sherry from Howard's Grove. I know we've mentioned this in the past, but it's really cool to get contributions from the local kids. And also now you're starting to gain more interest than the local kids do. Which I hope, you know, because there's enough local high schools in the area that are, you know, they play good football. And it's always a tough sell, I think, wherever you are to try to keep kids home sometimes, because sometimes they just want to get away. And I think if you make it more interesting, exciting for me, this is, you know, there's something going on. It's pretty good up at Lakeland. We'd love to be able to keep those kids. And you're right. The big thing is Van De Leu's freshman, or sophomore, Aaron Berry freshman, Sam Sherry is a junior. So you've got kids, you know, Eric Fritz is the only senior, locally for the most part. So we've got kids from the area who can play, and are going to play for years. And I hope other kids who want to come and say, they go home, hey, I'm really having a great time at Lakeland. The school's great, football's great, you know, and all that stuff. Probably what we should mention here is the other touchdown Jed Manders. I know you'd be mad if we didn't mention him here. Yes. So he had a 14-yard pass. It was kind of a broken play. We were, it was 39-7. We were on the, like, 14-yard line, 12-yard somewhere around there. We ran a play-action pass, and I'm kind of breaking down. I mean, it was an unbelievable play to scramble, and then Jed just kind of leaked out, and yeah, he'll be happy. He'll be happy to mention that if you watch. That's right. Let's go ahead and look at some, replay some highlights from the game on this pass, this past weekend. Again, it's Lakeland versus McMurray. All right. First, Mike Gregory is below this kid up, and that's kind of his, we love to see. Our defense is stroking people. They're Vandy's touchdown. They run a screen. Bad throw. Vandy picks it off, makes one guy miss, and he takes it to the house. And that's a second touchdown, too. Yeah, I love the sideline. I mean, the kids just, they're loving, they love to play right now. Here's our, one of our second drive. We throw a little play-action pass to Travis Jarvis, our fullback. Great job. Makes three guys miss. They weren't very good tacklers. So we told our kids, just keep running. Good things will happen. Here's Brent's touchdown. We run a little option. Up top, great run here. He starts from the left, cuts back across the ground. This is a 6'5, 235 pound kid taking it to the house. He's pulling away today. He is pulling away. He'll like that you said that. Because he is. He runs well. Here's Jeff's touchdown, 61 yard touchdown. He's talking about, great job taking the middle, breaks that kid off, and just takes to the house. The great thing is, you kind of feel that there's going to be some time in the game where you get this. Great run player. Our motion guy knocks this kid out. We get a great double, we got kids that are just blowing up in there. And then you get to see all our kids running down the field. And here's another big, there's Aaron Berry. Watch this pile of push. He gets four yard gain. By the time this play is over, it's a 16 yard gain. It's like a rugby scrum. And that's what's great about our kids playing hard. Here's our defense. They just get back on the field because they're ticked off by getting up a touchdown. And they come out. Here's a play, bang, ball pops out, Joel Lisp picks it up. And that's a great attitude to have on defense. Never leaving the field with a bad taste in your mouth. Here's Aaron Berry again. First gets in there. And he just goes through there quick. Bang, 16 yard touchdown. One play drag. Yeah, one play drag. I love that. And the kids are excited. Those are the twos and they're all excited. So it was great. You know, like you said, he saw some big plays, some punishing running game, some punishing hits on defense. I mean, there were kids getting, we had to say, the kids were going to stroked. The kids were going to stroked out there. And that's what you want. You want to be the most physical team out there. I always tell our kids, if you're the most physical team, you're always going to be in the game. Doesn't mean you're going to win it, but you're always going to be in it. Right. And if you're in it, then it comes down to, you know, a play here or there. Yeah. You can tell your kids just by watching the tape, how excited they are to play. You've got kids trailing the play. You've got kids pushing the pile. Guys in the sidelines. I mean, that's exciting. That's what kind of gives you chills as the coaches. And you know, as a baseball guy, when you see your kids kid it's a home run. The kids get all excited. Instead of sitting there going, oh yeah, here we go. I mean, our sidelines are going nuts. And that's what they bought into everything we've preached, just play with a passion. I just tell the kids, play as hard as, you know, I talk about playing how I coach, and I tell them, I'm not a nice guy in terms of, I want games like this in terms of, because it shows domination in the sense of both sides of the ball. But the physical, just weren't tearing the physical presence. But we've always tried to bring it right to the job. So we just need to become physical. And then hopefully everything else take care of itself. Right. Well, we've got to run down the numbers a little bit here too. You guys had 27 first downs compared to McMurray's only 13. You guys gained a net, net rushing 286 yards compared to the 89 we mentioned. 220 yards passing compared to 74. Time of possession, you guys had it for 3315. McMurray had it for 2645. Those are some of the key numbers that stand out for you guys. Yeah, it was. And I said the big thing was, we went through the ball 21 times, I think. It was 12 for 21 or something like that. And that's what we want. But you're getting 15 yards of pass play, 18 yards of pass play. And that's a nice day at the office right there. It sure is. 53 yards. 53 attempts rushing to us pretty nice. Yes. You guys are in control of the game. Right. But a couple of guys that stand out individually, you talked about Marcus Denham. He had 20 carries for 116 yards. Right. Loopy, we mentioned 11 for 18. 209 yards. Two touchdowns. Taft, seven catches for 133 yards and a long touchdown. That was a big game. That's a big game for every server. We only played for the three quarters. Yeah. Yeah. Even Jed Mander's coming from the tight end. Yeah. You guys, Casey Kodrowski, one punt. That's a good sign to it. That's what I told him. Zabrowski, Kodrowski. You know, it's that Polish connection. And I said, Casey, I love you, but I don't like seeing you on the football field. If I see you on the football field, in that case, that means we're not doing squat on offense. And he is an exceptional punter for a friend. He is unbelievable. It's tough to punt once you're all on the sideline doing it. He was about there. Great thing about that punt. He crushed it. They fumbled the ball right back. Yeah. Yeah. Good signs again. We mentioned nine tackles. Led the way. Johnny Ferguson had five. Paul Daniels and Eric Voigtbilt had five each too. A couple of the guys that had Sacks Ferguson, Daniels, Voigt as well. Excuse me. Benton and Shrimp. Yeah. The thing when you look at those tackle totals, you never sat here and said Roosevelt Morris 22 tackles. Right. And then everyone else had three. It's tough to find that big. It's eight, nine, six, four, five. That means a lot of guys getting to the ball and a lot of guys doing what they need to do to get the job done. That's what we were talking about before the show weekend and week out. It seems like we're mentioning a different name. Yeah. And that's good. That's a good thing. We don't have, like I said, I'm going to tell you what, we have, and people always all you down players, we have good kids and we have good players. Some players are very good, but I don't necessarily have that just one, you know, some of the states go to get that transfer kid who's just six, five, I mean just unbelievable and so on. We have hard-nosed kids that are tough to play, so I think that's what is not a tremendous one, unbelievable. No, we have some good ones though, no. But it's just kids, other kids just keep stepping up. And midway point here now you guys are four and one-half way through the season. It's amazing to start to have, I was just thinking about that too. I'm like, where'd it go? But I mean, what do you guys, where do you, how do you feel right now? Your first season as a head coach, where do you feel you're at right now? When I was driving home and I said four and one, you know, I didn't, I never, and you've talked to me, I know, fans I think, fans and people who care about baseball always make predictions and maybe other coaches will make these guys that guy can't do anything. And I think I just sat there and said, you know, the normal one game at a time stuff, but you know, what I wanted to do was one, come out of non-conference winning record. I thought that was important for a good note was important. You know, so four and one, I'm very happy. You know, you're always going to say, you know, five and oh, but four and one is very good. It shows that what we're doing is working. The kids are buying in, so yeah, I'm happy. I'm happy, but still not totally thrilled because I don't think you can ever be totally content. I guess it's a better word to say that. Never content. There's so much more you've got to work on, but I'm proud of how our kids are playing and improving every week. And let's say we're 25 and 15. I wish you were 26 and 14. Yeah, exactly. That was one game you looked back on. You know, this here, oh well, if we hit that, well, if we were five, if we were on the outskirts again, maybe we would have stumbled some more. You don't know. I think that game helped us more, not because we lost, but the way it came down. Yeah. Well, the other thing that you guys have to be really proud of here, halfway through, unbelievable recovery, trying to come back with really a blowing ACL. He doesn't want surgeries. He's just rehabbing it, playing special teams for us right now. And so we haven't had that one, you know, we got a kid here there out for a game, but you're right. And that's right now we're pretty unhealthy right now. Going in for being game six, coming up step six, we're pretty healthy. Well, now you got to probably what I judge is the biggest game coming up. You knew that was coming. Yeah, but I'm going to say it's the biggest game of the year. You don't have to say anything, but you guys obviously have Concordia, Mechwan coming up, always a big rivalry for us, the cheese bowl. Right. And you guys are sitting here both atop the conference at 2-0. Right. And the way it plays out based on schedules, of course, you guys are looking each other, this is the big game and whoever wins this would definitely be in the driver's seat. Right. And you're right. And fans have already told our kids, focus, it's step six. I think if I start saying, Mechwan, Holy Mackerel, cheating, all this stuff, I think our kids are getting all, you know, whatever you want to call it. Oh, hey. No, we're not stupid. I mean, it's a rivalry game. It's the closest team we play. You know, they're down the road. I just told our kids whenever there's something added to the game like a trophy, the cheese bowl. Well, that means it's important to the alumni and fans and faculty. That's a game. This is more, almost more important to them. They're like, hey, do I get that trophy back? And that's what I said. All I said is, it means a lot because this is an opportunity to gain something back and get put in our trophy case where it hasn't been for four years. I think or something like that, three years, four years has been over there. And that's why I think it adds a little more, you know, credence to this game. You win something. It's the people who have played here in the past. We really harp on trying to make sure those people realize how important they are to us. So yeah, like you said, what has happened is they're 2-0 or 2-0. They pounded two teams in the conference. We pounded two teams in the conference. So just by quirk of scheduling, game, step six, game six is a good one. And it's gonna be good. We watch Taper. They're very, they're sound, they're good. They're old, junior college because they got kids that are good sized kids and the only thing we have is us and Oshkosh, but we both played Oshkosh. Well you're getting lucky. We're getting a signal about that. Letting you off the hook. We'd like to talk more about the game. I wasted time on some other important things. Goodcourtney is a big game this weekend though. If you get a chance to drive down to Mequon just off I-43 there. 130. 130. Yep, 130. Biggest game of the year so far for the muskies. It's obviously the biggest game because it's the next game too. We'll be there once. Alright, sounds good. And of course other things going on on campus. If you have a chance, check out the website at Lakeland.edu. Check out Athletics. But of course the men's soccer team played this weekend and unfortunately they're 4-6-1 right now, but they're coming along a nice young team. They split this weekend. The women's team is struggling a little bit at 3-3-9. The women's volleyball team is off to a great start coming back from a slower start as their young team continues to improve. They're 9-11 right now. Look for them to be over 500 by the time we get back next week. So again, get down to Mequon and we'll see you next time on the Lakeland.