L-W East Makes Most of H-F's Many Turnovers

Turnovers kill a team’s momentum, wipe out scoring opportunities and ultimately cost a team a game.

The learned that the hard way against Lincoln-Way East on Friday night. The Vikings turned the ball over five times in

“Our inability to take care of the ball and take advantage of some of the turnovers (by East) early in the game cost us,” Vikings coach Craig Buzea.

After playing just about even with the Griffins in the first half, the Vikings headed into the locker room down 17-13 and took possession of the ball first to start the second half. H-F dinked-and-dunked its way across the 50-yard line and into Griffins territory before the first of five second-half turnovers killed the drive.

On a routine exchange between quarterback Tim Williams and a running back, the ball squirted free and East's Jake Aleck jumped on it.

“That stuff can't happen if you're going to beat a team of this caliber,” Buzea said. “Then after that, it just started snowballing.”

East wasted little time making the Vikings pay for the mistake, as quarterback Blake Winkler tossed a strike to Jason Robertson for a 67-yard touchdown.

“It's awesome knowing that the trust we formed with the receivers and I, that I can put the ball in the right place and they're going to go make a great play,” Winkler said. “Credit to the O-line also. Without them we're not making those great plays.”

On the ensuing H-F possession, Williams was picked off by Joe Tomasik in Vikings territory, and this time it was Nick Colangelo who found the end zone on a 25-yard scoring run that made the score 31-13 with 6:32 to go in the third quarter.

Down 18 points, the Vikings were forced to try to make up ground through the air, and East was ready. The Griffins picked off two more passes in the half to ice the game.

“We got into a situation where we had to throw the ball and things didn't work out real well for us,” Buzea said.