Huskies football battles hard, but ultimately falls to No. 5 Lakers
HOUGHTON — The Michigan Tech Huskies football team gave up 477 yards of offense to the No. 5 Grand Valley State Lakers Saturday afternoon at Kearly Stadium in Houghton. However, despite only gaining 100 yards on the game, the Huskies hung with the Lakers all day, falling in the end, 20-0.
Huskies coach Dan Mettlach was extremely proud of the effort of his team’s defense, which made life miserable for much of the afternoon for the Lakers.
“The stats don’t mean a whole ton to me, to be honest with you,” he said. “I thought our defense played incredible. We hold them to 20, a couple of fourth-down stops, inside the five, and so on. Defensively, we played well enough to win today.
“We just didn’t do enough offensively, obviously. You get blanked and can’t move the football in the second half. I expect more from us offensively, regardless of who we’re playing, and just didn’t get it done today. If they had 450 yards of total ‘O,’ (offense) that’s one thing. But, if you’re at the game the way our defense played, to be honest with you, I thought our effort, toughness, physicality everywhere was great to see.”
One of the reasons for Mettlach’s excitement about the way his defense performed was the effort of senior defensive lineman Austin Schlicht. Schlicht had six solo tackles, seven tackles total, with two sacks for 14 yards of loss. Senior defensive back Hunter Buechel also had a sack. Sophomore defensive back Junyoung Chung had two break-ups. Senior defensive back Jared Tarrance led the way with three break-ups. And, sophomore linebacker Chase Koch forced a fumble as well.
“I thought there’s a handful of names that you can mention on that side of the football that played really well today,” said Mettlach. “Austin being one of them. But that’s I think, something we talk about every week, whether you’re going into the fall Tuesday interview, whatever it might be. Schlicht, ‘Beeks,’ Owen (Watson), Dante (Basanese), all those guys, (Josh) Cribbens coming off injury, and giving the effort he did today, I just thought everybody on that side of football, we were violent, physical, and (I) proud of that.”
The Lakers were held off the board until their third possession of the first quarter when Khalil Eichelberger punched it in from just a yard out. The scoring drive went 12 plays for 63 yards to give the visitors a 7-0 lead.
The Huskies (6-4 overall, 3-3 GLIAC) had a number of chances to even things, but struggled to sustain drives, with one ending in an interception, and another including a high snap that shook things up.
Grand Valley then broke through for a second time on an 11-play drive that got 92 yards. The drive ended with Avery Moore finding Kyle Nott from 14 yards out for the touchdown.
The Huskies got the back halfway through the third quarter, but quickly went three and out.
The Lakers took the ball 51 yards in eight plays when Moore scrambled into the end zone from 11 yards out to make it a 20-0 game at that point. Mathew Bacik missed the point after.
“I don’t know how much time of possession they had on that first drive of the third quarter, but they convert a couple and you know what, we have three snaps,” Mettlach said. “We go three and out after getting a stop, and then they get the ball right back. So, I think they had the football for the entire third quarter.
“When you find a way to get off the field, regardless of it being an eight or nine-minute drive, whatever it was, we get the stop down in the red zone, and then we just can’t do anything offensively to either get them back out of the situation, where we can flip the field, or whatever. It was just tough. We played our butts off and, unfortunately, we didn’t help out enough.”
The next two Huskies possessions were also three and outs, which took away any chance they had of cutting into the Lakers’ advantage.
One bright spot in the Huskies’ offense was the play of sophomore running back Jake Rueff, who rushed 15 times for 62 yards. Mettlach credited the offensive line for allowing Rueff the time and space to find some success.
“That’s everybody. The ‘Q’ (quarterback, the tailback, the ‘O’ line, I thought, did a really nice job today running the ball again in the first half,” said Mettlach. “If we could have gotten one score to where you’re tied at halftime, or even down one score, everything’s still live at that point. By the time we get the football back in the fourth quarter, it’s 20-0 and we just didn’t move it enough at that point. Then you’re trying to throw it. But Jake ran hard, the ‘O’ line played really well.
“I give them a ton of credit. We talked about them for the last couple weeks. We got new guys playing in certain spots, and against that defensive front, and that box, to play with the effort and toughness that they played with is a good sign for things moving forward.”
UP NEXT
With the loss, the Huskies head to University Center Saturday to face the Saginaw Valley State Cardinals for the final game of the season.