After a solid start on the road against Luverne, the Opp Bobcats cooled off against a scrappy Tiger team that pulled out a 13-7 win.

On the opening drive of the game, the Bobcats marched down the field and capped the drive with a 25-yard scramble by quarterback Tyler Harrison.

However, Luverne came back to tie the game at seven with seconds left in the first quarter on a six-yard run by quarterback Tige Townsend.

In the second quarter, Luverne broke the tie when Townsend broke away on a 70-yard run to make the score 13-7.

From there, the game was an old-fashioned, smash-mouth defensive battle.

Opp mounted drives into Luverne territory several times in the second half, but each time the Tiger defense stood tall.

The Bobcats made it as far as the Luverne 9-yard line with 10:07 to play in the game, and also to the Luverne 30-yard line with 5:51 left, but Opp couldn’t capitalize on either opportunity.

Luverne faced a number of fourth downs late in the game, but conversions on fourth-and-short with 3:05 and less than 30 seconds to play sealed the game.

“Luverne has a championship tradition, and a tradition of winning, and they proved it tonight,” said Opp head coach Jack Whigham, whose Bobcats drop to 1-1 in the region with the loss. “They came out swinging. We had a lot of penalties that hurt us, and we just shot ourselves in the foot. Mistakes like that are my fault as the head coach.”

The Bobcats also dropped to 1-2 overall for the season.