A FAST STARTWASN’T ENOUGH FOR PANTHERS IN 40-28 LOSS
At least it wasn’t raining. After a near-perfect first quarter that saw the TMB football team open up a 14-0 lead, the rest of Friday’s game belonged to Sleepy Eye United, as SEU scored 26 unanswered points en route to a 40-28 Mid-South Conference win.
The Panthers were coming off one of the worst losses in program history to Springfield six days earlier, but showed no signs of harboring any negative feelings and proved early Friday that they had moved on.
After going three-and-out on its first possession, the Panthers made their intentions clear that they wanted to establish their running game, as TMB ran nine straight running plays on its second drive to get down to the SEU 8-yard line. Then the Panthers went to the air and Jackson Kruse connected with Emery Xiong for a touchdown. The conversion failed, but the Panthers had the lead they wanted.
“We were able to get the running game going early,” TMB coach Ryan Kruse said. “Nolan (Verlinde) and Jackson just did a nice job — they did a good job of getting the yards that were there. It wasn’t anything flashy, just power football; it was really cool to see.”
The Panthers got the ball right back on the ensuing drive when Aiden Sanow picked off a Landry Folkens pass and returned it to the SEU 29. On the next play, Kruse ran it in from 29 yards out, and a Verlinde two-point conversion put the Panthers up 14-0 with 4:20 left in the first quarter.
“We started as good as we could,” said Kruse. “We just gotta figure out a way to maintain that a little bit better.”
SEU struggled to move the ball on its third drive against a stout Panther defense, but it would show some signs of life in the second quarter. Each team committed a personal foul on SEU’s first drive of the quarter and finally got on the board with a Merrick Mathiowetz touchdown scamper.
But TMB was able to answer when Kruse broke loose for a big 50-yard run through the SEU defense to put the Panthers up 20-7. After the two teams traded turnovers, SEU made it 20-13 in the third quarter with an 8-yard run by Merrick Mathiowetz. who finished the game with 86 bruising yards and three scores.
“Our defense started out well; we were getting stops and tackling him to start with — we got him on that first contact and did a good job gang tackling,” coach Kruse said. “As the game wore on as we got tired … we were bouncing off that first tackle and we didn’t have another guy there. He wore us down, their O-line wore us down eventually.”
The Panthers were stopped on a 4thand-2 on their next possession, and SEU pounced. SEU kept getting stronger as the game went on, especially on the ground, and tied it at 20-20.
SEU would turn TMB over again and took its first lead at 26-20 on another Merrick Mathiowetz TD run. A Keeyan Netzke run put SEU ahead 33-20 with just over 11 minutes left in the game. It was SEU’s fifth straight touchdown, as the home team continued to wear down the TMB defense.
The Panthers got on the board again late in the fourth quarter on a 24-yard run by Kruse. Xiong caught the two-point try on a nice diving grab in the back of the end zone.
The final score didn’t indicate how the Panthers were able to keep pace with SEU. TMB allowed 318 yards of offense, but racked up 310 yards of its own. The Panthers also had two more first downs than SEU.
“We had chances to make plays today that we didn’t make,” coach Kruse said. “We need to keep doing the things we’re doing well, because we’re doing a lot of things well. We can’t end our season after a couple losses; we’ve got a long ways to go.”
Kruse rushed for 157 yards and three scores on 23 carries, and Verlinde had 55 hard-fought yards on the ground. Carson Lanoue was the defensive player of the game with seven tackles, including one for a loss. Sanow had five tackles.
