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By Lonnie Turner
It is a long way down I-95 to mile marker 5 and that’s how far the R-H Jaguars had to travel to get a good spanking by the Dillon Wildcats. This writer had just made the trip a day earlier on the way to Jacksonville, Florida, and believe me, it was a tiresome journey, so you can only imagine how long the trip back for the Jags must have been.
Jay Lester, for the most part, was right on the money with pin-point passing throughout the evening, completing 12 of 15 attempts for 182 yards and three touchdowns, while Dillon’s dynamic duo of Nemo Squires and TyQuan King were running over and through the Jag defense for 154 yards and two more scores.
The Wildcats scored on each of their first three possessions with three different players getting into the visitors end-zone. Corrian Wright climaxed an early 56-yard drive with a touchdown pass from Lester that covered nine yards. The drive took only two minutes and five seconds to put 7 points on the scoreboard. Place kicker Malachi Bember had a career night with 7 of 8 extra point kicks, hitting on seven straight before Mar’Quese Grant managed to block his final attempt.
Ahmari Huggins-Bruce was the only player to tally two six-pointers, catching a pair of bombs from Lester. The first covered 45 yards and the second, 26. All in all, Lester hooked up with the junior wide out for 93 yards on five catches, running his season’s total to 32 catches for 571 yards and eight touchdowns.Squires and King had a touchdown apiece in the first half and Lester ran 14 yards to score another before intermission to give the Cats a 42-0 lead.
The R-H head coach opted not to go with a continuous clock in he second half and the Cats scored two more TDs with reserves getting the chance to make a statement to the Dillon coaching staff. BoBo McKinnon stepped up first with a 48 yard romp around his left end on the second play of the third quarter for his first rushing score and Nigel George, who normally gets his chance in the second half to show out, ran for a 28-yard touchdown in the fourth quarter to end the scoring with his fourth six-pointer of the season.
While the offense was putting 542 yards on the stats sheet, the defense, led by Shamar McCollum, was holding the Jaguars to a net 167 yards, with only 55 on the ground. McCollum led the team with 9 tackles and 2 quarterback sacks. Also recording sacks were Shakai Jeanty with two and Roy Covington added one. Wright and Isaiah Benjamin intercepted Jag quarterback Jertaveon Smalls twice.
The Wildcats will host Swansea this coming Friday at 7:30 for their second meeting in state play-offs. The Cats beat the Tigers, 45-3 in the second round back in 2011 before being eliminated from the state run by Timberland.