Wind wreaks havoc on Huskies offense

The Owatonna Huskies opened their 2015 football season with a 28-6 loss at Mankato West in a game with plenty of mistakes and missed opportunities by the Huskies. 
The Mankato West Scarlets sacked Huskies quarterback Alex Emanuelson five times, blocked a field goal and owned field position for most of the game. 
“Mankato West is a good football team,” said Owatonna Head Coach Jeff Williams. “They challenged us in a lot of aspects of the game. I thought our kids, by the fourth quarter, kind of settled in, but it was a little bit too late.”
The game, which was set to originally begin at 7 p.m., was pushed to noon due to severe storm warnings. This weather still had a significant say in the game, however.  This was most notable in the first and third quarters when the Huskies were forced to punt into a strong wind, often resulting in barely any yardage. 
“They were very shrewd,” said Williams of the Scarlets decision making, as Mankato West elected to play with the wind in both the first and third quarters. 
Although boys teams got equal quarters with and against the wind, the Owatonna boys were seemingly affected coming out of the gates at both kickoff and after halftime. 
While the Huskies gave up 21 points in the first quarter, the defense played strong, stopping the Scarlets on fourth down on multiple occasions. However, the constant great field position from their opponents proved too much to stop. Despite this, the Huskies managed to hold Mankato West to just seven points the rest of the game. 
“I give our defense an awful lot of credit for hanging in there and allowing us to maybe find a way,” said Williams, adding that their were several positives he saw toward the end of the game. 
“We substituted a few kids (and) got some kids in there who are pretty aggressive. The run game kind of came around a little big, but again, we don’t get a chance to do that if our defense doesn’t keep us around. Them keeping up around helped us to be able to monkey around with a few things offensively. Hopefully, we can find a few things that can work moving forward.” 
The first game came a couple weeks earlier than usual for both teams, as the Minnesota State High School League pushed all season-openers up to accommodate the rescheduled Prep Bowl at the University of Minnesota TCF Stadium in October. This forced the already young Huskies squad to face a tough Mankato West team on much less practice than usual. 
“We had a lot of guys who didn’t have tremendous experience,” said Williams. “Now they do. Now, they have a better idea of what to expect, because this schedule isn’t going to get any easier for us.” 
One thing the Huskies will need to improve before they play Rochester John Marshall next week in their protection of Emanuelson. 
“We didn’t protect our quarterback at all,” said Williams. “We think we’ve got some receivers. We think we’ve got a quarterback who can throw the ball. We just need to give him a chance.”
Emanuelson got a few opportunities to shine in the fourth quarter, but was only able to amass 50 yards off 19 attempts. He also ran in the Huskies only touchdown from the one-yard line. 
The Huskies will be on the road again this week, travelling to Rochester for a 7 p.m. matchup against Rochester John Marshall. The Rockets are coming off a 32-7 win over Austin last Saturday and look to avenge a 25-25 loss to Owatonna last season.