After taking a 44-26 loss in their first home game against Monterey Peninsula College, the Los Medanos College Mustangs football team will look to bounce back this week as they travel to the central valley to battle Merced College.
“They didn’t beat us, we beat ourselves,” LMC head football coach Chris Shipe said during Wednesday’s practice on the loss against Monterey Peninsula. “Even though we lost to a good team last Saturday, that doesn’t make or break our season, so we have to get back to work and start concentrating on Merced.”
Shipe said the goal of the Mustangs when they went into their week two game against the Monterey Peninsula Lobos was to win the penalty and turnover battle. LMC did neither as quarterback Garrett Deatherage threw two interceptions and the Stangs team as a whole committed nine penalties for 69 yards.
LMC led 20-13 at the halftime break and Shipe credited the team’s offense for being able to sustain drives and move down the field. In the second half, however, Monterey Peninsula outscored the Mustangs 31-6, leading to the blowout victory.
“In the second half, we came out flat,” Shipe said. “They put 14 points on the board in a matter of four or five minutes and took away that momentum we had and we could never regain it. We have to understand it’s a 60-minute football game and we can’t be satisfied with the 30-minutes of being up.”
The Mustang offense scored just six second-half points as the group began to make mistakes they didn’t in the first half.
“We weren’t sustaining drives. There were penalties starting an offensive series or we’d take a sack and that would put us in a second and long,” Shipe said. “It’s hard enough to get 10 yards when it’s first and 10, let alone losing yards.”
While Shipe said the Mustangs’ defense played well in the first half at stopping the Lobo’s rushing attack, things started to break down in the second half for LMC.
“Defensively we were solid, doing some good things by stopping the run and forcing them to throw,” Shipe said. “We just weren’t doing a good job of gang tackling and bringing guys down. We let some big runs happen so that’s definitely an emphasis we’re working on this week.”
Tackling and stopping the run will be crucial for the Mustangs as they will try to neutralize Merced’s running back Tyler Jacklich. Jacklich rushed for 98 yards in week one and 134 in week two for the Blue Devils.
“Even though Merced’s 0-2, they’re still a good football team,” Shipe said. “We don’t want to be in a position like we were this past weekend. We want to be able to find a way at the end to be on top.”
Shipe said he felt the team beating themselves more than their opponent beating them spoke to what the potential of this year’s Mustang season can be.
“We have all the pieces now, it’s just a matter of putting everything on the field in place,” Shipe said. “It’s just a matter of all three phases of the game being on the same page. Not to say we weren’t this past weekend, we just let it slip away.”
