The Lakers had their chances, but a failure to score in the red zone (inside the opponent’s 20-yard line) led to a 28-14 loss at Morris Area-CA, Friday night during the Tigers’ Homecoming game. The Lakers outgained the Tigers by a 317-299 margin and both teams also had 15 first downs and two turnovers.

However, Minnewaska Area had several other scoring chances that came up short inside the Tiger-20, including the first two drives of the night, the second of which started on the Morris 8-yard line after a Austin Weber fumble recovery and on the 4-yard line to end the first half.

The Lakers are set to host Howard Lake-WW this Friday night at 7 p.m. before closing out the regular season, Wednesday, Oct. 19 at Eden Valley-Watkins.  Right now, Minnewaska (0-5 overall) is the seventh seed in Section 6AAA and would open up the playoffs at Pierz, Morris Area or NLS.

Morris Area 28, Waska 14

The Tigers scored on their first possession, but fumbled the ball away at the 8-yard line on their second possession.  Minnewaska started its first possession at its own 42 and drove to the Tiger 11 before giving the ball up on downs.

The Lakers ran four plays on their second possession, after recovering the fumble, but gained only four yards, giving the Tigers back the ball.

Morris scored again on a 7-play, 96-yard drive to go up 14-0, but the Lakers countered with a 10-play, 68-yard touchdown drive of their own to cut the deficit to 14-6.  Jack Majerus ran in from 15 yards for the touchdown.

The Tigers added a third score in the second quarter to go up 20-6 and that’s the way the first half ended despite the Lakers driving to the 4-yard line to end to end the first half.

Minnewaska Area scored again late in the third quarter on a 60-yard touchdown pass from PJ Johnson to Austin Ballhagen.

The two-point run Johnson closed the gap to 20-14, but that would be as close as the Lakers would get as Morris scored the final touchdown on their next drive to start the fourth quarter and there would be no more scoring the rest of the way.

•  Majerus had 130 yards rushing on 24 carries, while PJ Johnson ended the game 9-of-19 for 174 yards with one interception and one TD.

Austin Weber had five catches for 33 yards and Austin Ballhagen had four for 135.

Defensively, Chase Boelke and Noah Jensen had one sack each, Majerus had an interception and Weber had a fumble recovery.  The Lakers stopped the Tiger ground game, but couldn’t stop the aerial assault as Drew Huebner was 15-of-21 for 265 yards and three scores.

at Morris 28, Waska 14

Minnewaska (0-5) 0 6 8 0 — 14

Morris Area (3-2) 6 14 0 8 — 28

Team stats Min MOR

First downs 15 15

Rushes-net yards 37-148 22-49

Pass-cp-int-yds 22-10-1-169 23-16-1-250

Total yards 317 299

Punts-average 1-31 3-19.3

Fumbles-lost 2-1 1-1

Penalties-yards 5-62 10-81

Minnewaska statistics

Rushing — MIN-Jack Majerus 24-130, PJ Johnson 7-1, Chase Boelke 5-16 . . .MOR-Huebner 9-23, Mitchell Moser 7-15, Owen Anderson 5-8

Passing (attempts-comp-intercept-yrds) — MIN-PJ Johnson 19-9-1-174; Levi Johnson 3-1-0-2 . . . MOR-Drew Huebner 21-15-1-265

Receiving (catches-yards) — MIN-Austin Weber 5-33, Austin Ballhagen 4-135, Jack Majerus 1-8; Noah Jensen 1-0 . . . MOR-Tyler Berlinger 6-143, Andrew Marty 3-34, Owen Anderson 3-63

Punts-average — MIN-Hunter Kloos 1-31 . . . MOR-Kaleb Heins 3-19.3

Defense — Tackles-Unavailable . . . Sacks-Chase Boelke 1, Noah Jensen 1 . . . Interceptions-Jack Majerus 1 . . . Fumble recoveries-Austin Weber