Kennedy TO crazy again in win over North Scott

ELDRIDGE - Six forced turnovers in their first playoff game. Six more in their second.Six, six ... well, don't even go there. Maybe the Cedar Rapids Kennedy Cougars will get seven take-aways in their Class 4A quarterfinal.Kennedy is there thanks to a group of defensive larcenists that have guided them to a pair of surprising postseason wins, including 13-7 last night over North Scott at Lancer Stadium.Kennedy (7-4) gets a chance to whack another Mississippi Athletic Conference giant when it hosts unbeaten Bettendorf (11-0) in a Friday night quarterfinal at Kingston Stadium. You might remember it was a sub-. 500 Cougars team that upset mighty Bett in the first round last season.The way Kennedy is playing defense right now, it has to think it's got a shot again."I told them at the beginning of this whole thing that I'm an offensive guy now," said Kennedy Coach Tim Lewis. "But there are three things that win football games at this stage of the (season). One, you've got to execute and take care of the football ... And you've got to have great special teams and play great defense. I'm convinced of that, and I guess that has proved itself right now."Kennedy upended Cedar Rapids Xavier in last week's first round thanks to five fumble recoveries and an interception. Last night was an all interception night, with three of them coming from cornerback Jake Losch.He snatched a Louis DeFrieze Hail Mary near midfield on the final play to perfectly sum up he and his team's terrific defensive night. Anthony Crawley had two interceptions and Kyle Lamaak one."We just want to fly around," said Losch. "We weren't breaking tonight, we were forcing turnovers. The defense stepped up when we had to.""Forcing turnovers has been great for us," Crawley said. "We just came out in the second half and knew we had to get going ... We put it on our defense. We said ‘You know what. We're going to come out and play a heck of a second half.' That's what we did."Kennedy took a 13-7 lead into the half on a 3-yard touchdown run from R.J. Adams and 20-yard TD pass from Jed Haycraft to fullback Chase Fergus. But the Cougars should have been up by at least another score, considering back Trevor Heitland fumbled at the 2 going in for a second-quarter touchdown.Then there was the debacle right before the half, when Kennedy had a 1st-and-goal at the 1 with 16 seconds left and the clock running. Instead of spiking the ball and setting up for a play, Kennedy decided to run Adams up the middle, only to have him get stuffed and the clock run out since Kennedy had no remaining timeouts."It was one of those deals where we need an inch," Lewis said. "We always tell our kids we're going to run our best back behind our best linemen. If we can't get an inch, then they deserve (the stop). That's basically what happened. We had two plays called when we went out there. We executed them fine, they just stopped us."Heitland had 106 yards rushing and Adams 94 for Kennedy. North Scott (9-1) was limited to 213 total yards, with leading rusher Aaron Huber held to 65 on 20 attempts.Here is the game boxscore:

C.R. Kennedy 13 North Scott 7

AT ELDRIDGE CRK NS First downs 13 11 Rushes-yards 48-231 26-86 Passing yards 52 127 Comp-att-int. 5-11-0 13-27-6 Punts-avg. 7-34.5 5-36.8 Penalties-yards 2-25 2-10 Fumbles-lost 5-2 0-0

C.R. Kennedy 0 13 0 0-13 North Scott 0 7 0 0- 7 CRK-R.J. Adams 3 run (Nick Bruns kick) CRK-Chase Fergus 20 pass from Jed Haycraft (kick failed) NS-Darren Dillon 2 pass from Louis DeFrieze (Austin Miller kick)

INDIVIDUAL STASTICIS RUSHING - Kennedy: Trevor Heitland 17-106, R.J. Adams 24-94, Anthony Crawley 3-23, Jed Haycraft 3-6, Team 1-2.

North Scott: Aaron Huber 20-65, Louis DeFrieze 5-23, Travis Anderson 1-(minus) 2.

PASSING - Kennedy: Jed Haycraft 5-11-0-52.

North Scott: Louis DeFrieze 13-26-6-127, Aaron Huber 0-1-0-0.

RECEIVING - Kennedy: Chase Fergus 1-20, Jake Wagner 1-14, Jake Losch 1-9, Christian French 1-5, Josh Jahlas 1-4.

North Scott: Darren Dillon 5-44, Travis Anderson 4-44, Aaron Huber 1-17, Jake Garnette 2-11, Nathan Ihrig 1-11.