Rangers host No. 7 Snow today
Oct. 23—As recently as the third or fourth week of the season, it appeared the non-conference game between Kilgore College and Snow College would be a battle of top-five teams in the NJCAA poll, fighting for position and a spot in a four-team playoff for the national championship of junior college football.
Fast forward to now, and things have changed for both KC and for Snow, but not entirely — Snow has an outside shot of getting back into that four-team spot, and the Rangers still have something to play for, too.
KC (3-3 overall, 2-3 in Southwest Junior College Football Conference play) hosts Snow (5-1), a Utah college ranked seventh in the nation, today at 3 p.m. here at R.E. St. John Memorial Stadium. The game will likely be live-streamed on the KC YouTube channel.
The Rangers have a dual role today. They have an outside shot at making the conference playoffs, and they can play spoiler for Snow.
Regarding their own conference playoff, the top four teams in the conference standings make that playoff, which happens after the regular season. KC is currently in sixth, but defeated Blinn, and would own a tiebreaker there, and has yet to play Tyler Junior College when it counts, although the Rangers beat TJC in a non-conference game the first week of the season.
KC is out of conference today, but hosts Trinity Valley next week (Oct. 30) and hosts TJC the week after (Nov. 6). The Rangers can mathematically still get in by winning both and getting help (way more than can be explained here at the moment). But today's business is about beating a Snow program that barely lost the national championship game to Hutchinson (Kan.) a year ago and would love to have another chance.
Snow (located in Ephraim, Utah) is seventh now, as mentioned, and like KC, Snow would need to win its remaining regular season games and get help to get to that No. 4 in the nation slot. The Rangers could deal Snow a momentum-killing loss today, which with Snow's current status as number seven, and having made the championship game last year, would be a big win for coach Willie Gooden and his KC program.
The Badgers come into this contest at KC with a reputation of "anyone, anytime, anywhere," i.e., they'll play anyone, at any time, at any location. KC and Snow should both get credit for scheduling this game, a huge non-conference game that brings one of the nation's best programs to Texas, where the junior college football is literally second-to-none, against what is traditionally the top JUCO program in Texas, the Kilgore College Rangers.
Snow's only loss of the season was back on Oct. 8 to Iowa Western, another traditional JUCO power (currently ranked second in the nation). They lost to Iowa Western, 17-14. The Badgers' biggest loss, though, was one of their own: offensive lineman Mafatini Mafatini, a freshman from Hawaii who was lost in a one-vehicle accident in early October.
On the field, the Badgers have averaged 410 yards and 49 points per game, while allowing an average of 248 yards and only 15 points per game.
KC, as difficult as it is to believe, has lost three straight games: to New Mexico Military (now ranked sixth in the nation), to Navarro, and to Cisco — and only one of those was at home, the loss to Navarro.
KC is averaging an almost-unbelievable 572 yards a game, including 346 passing yards a game. They're scoring on average 35 points a game and allowing just 27 points a game, on average.
The Rangers have been off a while: they had a bye last week after losing at Cisco, 38-14, on Oct. 9.
