Class 1A: Halftime talk sparks Marquette to 20-6 triumph over Morrison

OTTAWA – If Marquette coach Tom Jobst could bottle his halftime talk from Saturday, he would make millions, because every football coach on the planet would buy it.

After squandering away four chances in Morrison territory and having a fumbled punt snap give the Mustangs a short field for the only score of the first half, the Crusaders came away from halftime playing like a team possessed.

In the span of just six plays, Jurnee Reed broke free for touchdowns of 29 and 49 yards, and Tommy Durdan converted a 37-yard TD to give the No. 3-seeded Cru a hard-fought, 20-6 Class 1A playoff victory over No. 14 seed Morrison at Gould Stadium.

Marquette, limited by the Mustangs defense to just 59 yards of total offense in the first two quarters, used renewed intensity to put up all of its points and 139 of its 246 offensive yards in the third period to not only advance into the second round, but also give Jobst his 100th victory in his 14-year stint at the school.

The Cru (9-1) will meet No. 11 seed Dakota next Saturday at 1 p.m. in Dakota. The Indians (6-4) upended No. 6 Iroquois West 16-14 in Gilman on Saturday.

“I went into the blockhouse, and they were all sitting there tensed up. I told them, ‘Relax, guys, I’m not gonna yell at you, but we’ve got some work to do,’ " Jobst said. “We talked about what we could do differently, what we could do better and got some good feedback from them … and they came out in the second half with the intensity they should have had in the first.

“What’s meaningful to me is not 100 wins, but that these kids won a playoff game. That’s all I was worried about. We knew this would be a tough one. I’m just glad we could withstand it.”

The Crusaders, who scored on four of their first five chances in Week 9′s win at Sherrard, drew a goose egg in seven first-half tries against Morrison despite reaching the Mustang 23, 15, 39 and 41. On three of five possessions, they turned the ball over on downs, once on an interception.

On the fifth one, a fumbled punt snap resulted in Morrison taking over at the Cru 12-yard line, and two plays later freshman Brady Anderson dove in from a yard out for a 6-0 visitors lead.

But it was a whole new ballgame following that halftime chat. After Jacob Smith recovered a Morrison fumble, Reed ignited the sideline and the crowd by rumbling 29 yards to paydirt on a trap play disguised by jet motion to the opposite side. The Cru ran the same play again on its next series, and again Reed took it to the house, this time from 49 yards away. Sam Mitre’s second PAT gave the Cru a 14-6 lead.

Reed finished the day with 128 yards on 16 carries.

“We ran the trap with the rocket motion, and the hole was huge,” Reed said. “The line did great blocking, Noah (Barth) did a great job picking up the end, then we did it again, and it worked like a charm again.

“In the first half we came out really flat, but Coach Jobst gave us a really great talk. It wasn’t angry, just that he expected more from us, that we could play with more intensity, more emotion, because for we seniors, it could be our last game. It was very inspirational, so we stepped up and played like we can play as a team.”

After another defensive stop and a short Mustangs punt, Durdan capped the scoring with a 37-yard jaunt with just over a minute left in the period for a 20-6 edge.

“We were almost perfect defensively in the first half,” Morrison coach Steve Snider said. “In the third quarter, Marquette took advantage of just a couple of little things that they saw in the first half, with a trap after running jet motion away to get the linebackers to look away just for a half-second. That’s all it took to get them free on those first two touchdowns.

“It was a fun football game, one you could say they just did three more things right than we did.”

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