Belle Plaine run game too much for C-M football

PELLA — Colfax-Mingo answered Belle Plaine’s first scoring drive of the game on Friday night when the Tigerhawks reached paydirt on their first offensive play from scrimmage.

Unfortunately for Colfax-Mingo’s football team, Belle Plaine was too good up front and too good in the running game during a 41-14 win at Central College.

The Plainsmen rushed for 463 yards in the Class A District 6 victory. Three different players gained at least 100 yards and a fourth went for 87.

“They were just better up front than we were. We knew it was going to be won in the trenches,” Colfax-Mingo football coach Jeff Lietz said. “We talked to our linemen all week about it. And they won the battle up front and that hurt us.”

Colfax-Mingo led 7-6 in the first quarter after Cole Bracewell hooked up with Curtis Horras for a 65-yard touchdown on the Tigerhawks’ first offensive play.

That answered Belle Plaine’s nine-play, 63-yard drive that ended with a 33-yard touchdown pass on fourth and 11.

The Plainsmen (3-1 overall, 2-0 in the district) responded to C-M’s big play by going 63 yards on their next possession. All seven plays were on the ground, the final three totaling 13, 20 and 11 yards.

“To come back and score on play one, I hoped it would energize our D a little bit,” Lietz said. “They answered back after we answered them. We knew they were going to run. We knew they wanted to try to control the clock. They were aggressive getting off the ball. They got their pad level low and were able to get four, five and six yards at a time.”

C-M (1-3, 0-1) had five possessions in the first half but two ended in three plays and the final drive was cut to one play as the half ended.

Belle Plaine scored two more times in the second. Its third scoring drive covered nine plays, eight of which were runs.

After C-M went three plays and out, Belle Plaine scored again. The Plainsmen went up 28-7 following an 11-play drive that featured a fake punt on fourth and 12 that went for 26 yards.

The Tigerhawks went three and out on their first second-half possession, but Merritt McConeghey forced a turnover when he stripped the ball away from a Belle Plaine ball carrier.

The Plainsmen runner went into a pile of players and McConeghey came out with the ball and rumbled 56 yards the other way.

C-M got one first down but turned it over on downs after three straight incompletions.

Ben DeMeulenaere scored on Belle Plaine’s next possession. After he was flagged for a personal foul on the previous play, DeMeulenaere sprinted 70 yards to put his team up 34-7.

The Tigerhawks added to their total on their next possession. Bracewell completed three passes to Horras on the drive. The first was a 26-yard pass on third and 13. All three completions went for first downs.

Bracewell ended the drive with a 4-yard TD pass to Trey Hockemeier.

Horras finished with six catches for 148 yards and a TD.

“He’s a special athlete. He can leap and battles for the ball. He’s still only a sophomore. The sky is the limit with him,” Lietz said.

The Tigerhawks thought they could have success with deep balls in the passing game.

Hockemeier had five catches for 32 yards and a TD, Colton Lind finished with five catches for 42 yards, Cael Bracewell chipped in two catches for 10 yards and Justin Myers had one grab for six yards.

Bracewell finished 19-of-32 for 238 yards and two scores. He rushed for 30 yards on 11 carries.

“We knew we probably had some opportunities to beat them deep. We knew we had some athletes who we could out-man them with,” Lietz said. “We like all of our receivers. Those guys are all playing well. We try to find ways to get them the ball, but unfortunately we didn’t have many opportunities because we couldn’t get the stops on defense.”

The Tigerhawks ran 13 total plays in the first half and 34 in the final two quarters. They ran for just 25 yards as a team.

“Not having very many offensive possessions hurt us, too,” Lietz said.

Bracewell led the defense with 10 1/2 tackles. Joe Earles collected nine tackles, Myers finished with six tackles, McConeghey, Lind and Hockemeier all had four tackles and Nate Jones and Shane Aikin each tallied three tackles.

Connor Timm had 118 yards and two TDs on 17 carries and added two catches for 48 yards and one TD for Belle Plaine. DeMeulenaere threw for 99 and a TD and rushed for 108 and another score.

Notes: The remaining Tigerhawk home games will be played at Central College because of construction at the high school in Colfax.