UPDATED: Spartans in must-win situation following loss

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The Superior High School football team has its back against the wall after a 28-14 loss at River Falls Friday night.

Needing to win one of their final two games to qualify for the WIAA playoffs, the Spartans failed Friday and now must wait Thursday night when they host the Eau Claire North Huskies in the final game of the regular season.

“This week is our last home game, it’s parents night for our seniors and we need to win to qualify for the playoffs, it can’t get any bigger than that,” SHS coach Bob DeMeyer said. “There’s a lot on the line and we want to extend our season. We plan to put it all together and play a complete game, four quarters of solid, fundamentally sound, energetic football.”

North’s (2-6 overall, 2-4 in the Big Rivers Conference) last victory was a 17-0 win over River Falls on Oct. 8. The Huskies lost to Hudson last weekend, 34-14.

Friday’s loss drops Superior to 3-5 overall and 3-3 in the BRC.

“North is a good football team with a lot of good athletes,” DeMeyer said. “They beat the same River Falls team that we lost to last week and came back from a big deficit to beat Rice Lake, so we can’t take them lightly.

“They play an aggressive 3-5 defense that flies around, offensively they have a quarterback that throws and runs very well and several quality receivers.”

River Falls took the opening kick, marched 67 yards and took a 6-0 lead when Dylan Dock connected with Jack Herum on an 11-yard touchdown. The extra-point kick was missed, giving the Wildcats a 6-0 lead with 3:28 left in the first quarter.

After the Spartans failed to take advantage of a Zach Colvin interception and punted the ball away twice, River Falls took a 14-0 lead with 4:07 left in the first half when Zach Pavlichek caught a 10-yard scoring pass from Ryan Kusilek. Mark Bennett ran in for the two-point conversion.

Sparking the drive, which started at the Wildcat 19-yard line, were runs of 16, 22 and 21 yards.

Superior followed my moving the ball deep into River Falls’ territory, but time ran out on them when Colvin was stopped tackled for a 1-yard loss at the 6 as time expired.

River Falls threatened to add to its lead after halftime, but the Spartans’ defense stopped the Wild Cats on a fourth-down pass play at the 24 with 1:48 left in the third quarter.

Superior’s first touchdown of the game came seven plays later when Colvin ran in from 5 yards out. Key plays on the driver were Kellen McCoshen passes of 31 yards to Ethan Taylor and 35 yards to Mike LaValley.

River Falls rebounded with touchdowns on its next two drives, the second of which was set up by a Spartan fumble.

Superior rounded out the score when McCoshen and junior Josh Gordon connected on an 8-yard scoring pass with 1:48 remaining.

“We missed too many assignments, made too many mental errors and too many fundamental mistakes to beat anyone,” DeMeyer said. “We knew River Falls was a good football team and they put it all together to win their last home game. It was very similar to what happened in the Eau Claire Memorial game.”

Mike LaValley and Cole Schorr also returned to action for Superior, but the Spartans played without its top two fullbacks in AJ Soland (ill) and Chad Murray (ankle).

“We’ve battled through some injuries and illness the past couple weeks forcing us to play kids with little or no varsity experience at certain positions,” DeMeyer said. “With that said, it should help us in the long run, giving us more depth when we get kids back to full strength.”

SPARTAN SPIN: Jake Turkowski led the Spartans with 12 tackles. McCoshen added 11 and Taylor has 10. … Senior Jake Mergen had six tackles in his return to the SHS lineup. Mergen hasn’t played since the first game of the season. Friday’s win was the first in the BRC for the Wildcats, who are 3-5 overall and 1-5 in league play.

Superior 0 0 0 14 — 14

River Falls 6 8 0 14 — 28

First Quarter

RF—Dylan Dock 11-yard pass to Jack Herum, 3:28

Second Quarter

RF—Ryan Kusilek 10-yard pass to Zach Pavlichek (Mark Bennett run), 4:07.

Fourth Quarter

SHS—Zach Colvin 5-yard run (David Zastrow kick), 11:54.

RF—Ryan Kusilek 19-yard pass to Pavlichek (Ryan Kusilek kick), 7:16.

RF—Nick Zimmerman 2-yard run (Kusilek kick), 3:04.

SHS—Kellen McCoshen 8-yard pass to Josh Gordon (Zastrow kick), 1:48.

Team stats

SHS RF

First downs 11 15

Rushes-yards 28-93 56-261

Pass comp.-att 11-17 3-5

Passing yardage 156 40

Comp-att-int 11-17-1 3-5-1

Return yards 48 37

Total plays 45 61

Total offense 249 301

Fumbles - lost 2-1 2-0

Penalties-yards 1-10 2-15

Def. sacks-yards lost 0-0 1-6

Time of possession 17:10 30:50

3rd down efficiency 4 for 9 8 for 14

4th down efficiency 1 for 2 3 for 5

Punts-average 2-36 0-0

Individual statistics

Rushing: SHS—Dan Quade, 7-29; Ethan Taylor, 7-23; Zach Colvin, 6-21; Casey Preston, 3-10; Kellen McCoshen, 5-10. RF—Nick Zimmerman, 24-144; Dylan Dock, 10-46; Henry Higgins, 6-40; Zach Pavlichek, 1-16; Oscar White, 5-8; Mark Bennett, 7-4; Austin Johnson, 3-3.

Passing: SHS—McCoshen, 11-17-1-156. RF—Ryan Kusilek, 2-3-0-29; Dock, 1-2-1-11.

Receiving: SHS—Mike LaValley, 4-68; Colvin, 4-35; Taylor, 2-45; Josh Gordon, 1-8. RF—Zach Pavlichek, 2-29; Jack Herum, 1-11.

Defense - Superior

Tkl Ast TFL Int

Turkowski, Jake 12 6 0.0 0

McCoshen, Kellen 11 2 0.0 0

Taylor, Ethan 10 5 0.0 0

Mergen, Jake 6 4 0.0 0

Bogojevic, Nikola 6 2 1.0 0

Schorr, Cole 4 3 0.0 0

Colvin, Zach 4 2 0.0 1

Dembroski, Rob 4 2 0.0 0

LaValley, Mike 3 2 0.5 0

Collins, Scott 3 1 0.0 0

Zuchowski, Byron 3 0 0.0 0

Butera, Jordan 2 1 0.5 0

Lamoreaux, Bill 1 1 0.0 0

Bergum, Jack 1 0 0.0 0

Bronson, Andrew 1 1 0.0 0

LaPorte, Nolan 1 1 0.0 0

Lorenz, Colton 1 1 0.0 0

Kutzler, Ryan 1 0 0.0 0

Gordon, Josh 1 0 0.0 0

Total: 75 34 2.0 1

River Falls

Tkl Sac TFL Int

Wunrow, Ben 7 0 0 0

Zimmerman, Nick 4 0 1 1

Dock, Dylan 4 0 0 0

Adam, Talal 4 0 0 0

White, Oscar 3 0 0 0

Bennett, Mark 3 0 0 0

Pavlichek, Zach 3 1 1 0

Kozak, James 2 0 0 0

James, Dylan 2 0 0 0

Total: 37 1 2 1

Tags: sports, superior, spartans, football