McLean County’s perfect start to the season ended Friday when they came up short in a heartbreaker to Grayson County. Despite a stingy defense and the offense outgaining Grayson County by more than 100 yards, the Cougars fell 14-6 due to some untimely errors.
“Moving forward we need to focus in and we can’t make mistakes,” McLean County head coach Zach Wagner said. “We had a fumble at a bad time, three poorly timed penalties that killed drives, and mishaps on snaps. We outgained them by over 100 yards, but twice we had the ball in the red zone and didn’t score.”
The Cougars took an early first-quarter lead thanks to a 4-yard touchdown run by Aden Bolden, but the two-point attempt was unsuccessful. Grayson County responded, taking a 7-6 lead with 11:55 left in the second quarter. About 6 minutes later, Grayson County scored again to make it 14-6 with 5:10 left in the first half.
Neither team scored in the second half, but the Cougars had a chance to tie it with a minute left. HB Whitaker hauled in back-to-back catches to put McLean County in scoring range, but a mishap on a snap derailed the drive, and the offense was unable to recover the momentum.
McLean County has a week to clean up their unforced errors before taking on a surging 3-0 Hancock County.
“We need to focus on cutting down on mental mistakes,” Wagner said. “We know it’s a big week. Hancock County is rolling and we need to fix our errors.”
