La Salle Tops Moeller

The undefeated streak came to an end Friday night for the Fighting Crusaders of Archbishop Moeller High School in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Crusaders who were ranked 24th in the Nation and 2nd in the state of Ohio, according to MaxPreps.com were beaten by their rival, the La Salle Lancers, and their rushing attack 34-9.

The Crusaders, who are use to winning, have only lost five of their previous 36 games. But the Lancers running back, Jeremy Larkin was a key factor to the win over Moeller. He rushed 32 times for 216 yards and 4 touchdowns.

The Lancers rushed for 267 yards in the game. This is short of their average of 473 yards a game, but still well above the national average of 183.9 yards a game. The Crusaders' defense was able to slow the above average rushing attack, but it was not enough.

Starting defensive back Mitch Brauning believes that it was a simple reason why the Lancers won.

"They straight up just wanted it more than we did," Brauning explained.

Matt Crable, the Crusaders' starting quarterback added by saying it may have even been more mechanical than that.

"I don't know if there was one specific thing that caused the loss. It was a lot of little mistakes that added up in the long run," Crable said. "Penalties, missed assignments, etc. We had a lot of mental mistakes that need to be fixed".

However, even though there may have been many issues during the game, both players explained that they had personal attributes to the game that they needed to improve on.

"I need to improve on personally is making sure the team is focused at all times," Brauning said.

Crable also took more of a team responsibility towards what he believed that he needed to improve on.

"I need to improve on making sure that everyone's head stays up during that game," Crable explained. "We got down on ourselves pretty quick and I didn't do a very good job at keeping people up".

Either way, the Crusaders have a short memory and are already focusing on their next game against the Elder Panthers.

"We have to bounce back. We know what we have to do and we know what we did wrong in that game," Crable said. "The worst thing that we could do is sit around and pout about that game we have to bounce back and take care of business against Elder".