Rangers tame Broncos; on to Navarro Saturday
Apr. 14—Number two and still perfect — that's a pretty accurate description of the Kilgore College Rangers football program after Saturday's latest win.
Kilgore College scored all of its points in the first half, and then held off a scrappy New Mexico Military Institute team, 34-23, here at R.E. St. John Memorial Stadium on Saturday.
Coach Willie Gooden's Rangers are 3-0 overall, all against Southwest Junior College Football Conference opponents. And they'll try and make it 4-0 this Saturday, when they visit Navarro College in Corsicana, another 3 p.m. kickoff.
See a preview of that game in Saturday morning's Kilgore News Herald.
The latest NJCAA poll was released on Monday — the Rangers are still second, behind No. 1 Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College, ironically the same college the KC basketball team will face next Monday to open the NJCAA Men's National Basketball Tournament — in Hutchinson.
KC conference rivals Trinity Valley (sixth) and Cisco (eighth) are also ranked in this week's poll.
New Mexico Military got the ball to open the game and gave it right away, namely to Damian Crawford, and he plays for KC — an interception that put the Rangers in business.
Former Kilgore High School running back Kennieth Lacy got the party started for the Rangers in the first quarter, putting KC on the board with an 82-yard touchdown run. The Rangers, who had not passed much in the first two games, worked on the passing game a bit in the first half. Chance Amie, from Tyler Legacy (formerly Lee), completed 7-of-15 pass attempts for 144 yards and three touchdowns, and also ran for a touchdown.
As a team, the Rangers rolled up 302 rushing yards.
KC made it 13-0 after a 30 yard touchdown from Amie to Willie McCoy. That was made possible by another NMMI turnover, a fumble on a punt. The Broncos did block the extra point, but it would get much worse for them before the end of the half.
KC's third touchdown was just plain old imposing their will, a 67-yard drive that ended with Amie's touchdown run, from 3 yards out (KC 20, NMMI 0).
The Broncos' lone touchdown of the first half came on their own workmanlike drive, a 76-yarder that culminated with a 1-yard run by Diego Pavia, just two minutes into the second quarter (20-7 KC).
The Rangers would add two more scores, though, before the half. Another punt-gone-bad resulted in KC getting the ball inside NMMI's 45-yard-line, and KC got an incredible catch by Marquese Pearson for their fourth touchdown of the game, a highlight-reel catch that brought the crowd to their feet.
There was one more spectacular catch in the first half, but this one wasn't by either offense. It was KC's Garrison Johnson, who made a one-hander, and then got free for a 54-yard interception return for a score, with just over a minute to play in the half.
KC took the air out of the ball a bit in the second half, and the Broncos were able to score, but the game never really felt out of the Rangers' control.
NMMI running back Anthony Grant led the Broncos with 142 yards — the Broncos wound up with 202 rushing yards. Still, it was another good defensive effort by KC, who had four interceptions (Tiji Paul-Gorman and Chase Crumpton each had one, in addition to the ones by Crawford and Johnson) and Maurice Westmoreland added two sacks.
KC has a multi-pronged backfield and several players get carries in their system: Lacy finished with 160 yards and the score, and also was key in the final three minutes in helping the Rangers run out the clock. Bailee Davenport had 74 yards rushing, as well. McCoy finished with 76 yards and the score on four catches, and Pearson had 60 yards and the spectacular catch for the score in his five total grabs.
