It’s the third quarter, EC leads Riverside 27-16 and Ken Ashley runs for a 1 yard score to put the Warriors up 34-16 and put the game away on their way to a 41-16 win over Riverside College on Saturday Night at Murdock Stadium.
The Warriors next game is Saturday at Chaffey College at 6 p.m. in Grigsby Field. The Panthers come into this game with a 2-2 record on the season.
“Chaffey is a dangerous team to be playing now, their 2-2 on the season and have been in every game they have played in so far this season,” coach John Featherstone said.
The Warriors really don’t worry about playing at another college home and how there fan’s react.
“Well we been on the road, before we went to L.A. Southwest and than EC Compton, so this is our third road trip and it’s only an hour away, it’s not a real long bus drive and the team will be fired up over there and we really don’t worry about hostile environment,” Featherstone said.
Quarterback Matt Simms didn’t have a good perfomance, but he still finished 17-35 for 220 yards and a touchdown throw and he played better in the second half.
“Yeah, Simms was a little off his game and you will make mistakes, that why you run and pass , the run was effective this week and the pass was effective last week,” Featherstone said.
“Simms struggled a little bit, he struggled in the first half, but we picked it up in the second half and he was able to complete throws and get more into a rhythm and he did better in the second half,” Quarterback coach Matt Engle said.
With the offense not playing a good game, coach talked to his team and told them at halftime let’s goe to plan B.
“I told the team, let’s goe back to the ground game and take them off their heels again and we did and it took them nine plays to score and we know we could run the clock from there,” Featherstone said.
The Warriors had 445 yards of offense, including 225 on the ground and 220 through the air.
On offense, Running Back Ken Ashley had 124 yards on 19 carries and two rushing touchdowns and Running Back Tony Sekona had 33 yards on two reception and a touchdown.
The defense was dominant again in this game, they had a forced fumble by LB Bilal Muhammad and Safety Eric Taylor had a interception for a touchdown late in the game.
“Defense played a great game and missed a couple of tackles in the first half, but where good the second half and their our back bone of the team,” Featherstone said.
“We didn’t start out as fast as we wanted in the first half and than we picked it up and we started to excuted on our assignments and we felt like we finished off well,” Taylor said.
On defense, defensive end Daniel Stewart had seven tackles, two sacks, two tackles for a lost, deflection, recovered fumble, and two big hits and Taylor had eight tackles, interception, forced fumble, one big hit and a touchdown.
Coach Featherstone doesn’t believe his team can win a game, if his offense or defense struggle and they will need it this weekend on the raod.
“Yeah, realistic every week you have to have a good performance from offense and defense to generate win football games, sometimes you can have one side of the ball play horrible and still win,” Featherstone said.