Jacksonville junior running back Lamont Gause rushed for 249 yards and three touchdowns, with 236 of those yards coming in the first half, as the Red Devils posted a 42-21 victory over host Little Rock Christian in a game that took a drastic shift after the first half ended.
Jacksonville (4-4, 3-2 5A-Central) racked up 459 total yards in the first half and led 42-7 with 3:17 left in the second quarter, but a Little Rock Christian touchdown before halftime kept the clock from running continuously in the second half, and the Warriors turned the momentum in their direction, limiting the Red Devils to two first downs in the game’s final 24 minutes.
“The thing we wanted to do was clean up some of the penalties that we had been committing in the past couple of games and we did that,” Jacksonville Coach Rick Russell said. “But did we execute in the second half as well as we did in the first half? No. But we played hard enough to keep them out of the end zone on defense and run the clock on offense. So, we would have liked to have scored in the second half, but we did what we wanted to do.”
Little Rock Christian (3-5, 1-4) out gained Jacksonville 185-58 in the final two quarters, but the Warriors scored just once, on sophomore Joe Hampton’s third touchdown reception of the game, capping a 19-play, 93-yard drive with 3:28 remaining in the third quarter.
“They are a really good football team and they’ve had it going the last couple of weeks,” Little Rock Christian Coach Jeff Weaver said.
Jacksonville scored on its first six possessions with Gause and Damon Thomas each scoring three touchdowns. Gause scored on an 82-yard run on the Red Devils’ first play from scrimmage. He later added scoring runs of 1 and 30 yards. Thomas scored on runs of 34, 12 and 38 yards and would eventually finish the game with 88 yards on 10 carries.
“He’s got a burst that’s just hard to explain,” Russell said of Gause. “When he’s on, we’re pretty good.”
Little Rock Christian quarterback Angel Houston was 33 of 46 for 352 yards, but he was sacked six times. Hampton finished with seven receptions for 103 yards, catching TD passes of 51, 11 and 5 yards. Paxton Thomas was the Warriors’ leading receiver with 13 catches for 153 yards.
Sports, Pages 26 on 10/26/2013