Casmen Hill peeled off a 42-yard touchdown run on Chandler’s first offensive series and the Lions kept their offense in high gear all night, motoring to a 53-0 win over rival Stroud Friday.
When the game was done, Chandler had 599 yards of total offense, a second straight shutout over the Tigers and another year of bragging rights and displaying the Banc-First traveling trophy that goes to the winner of the Route 66 Classic every year.
“There was a long time where they were on the flip side of it,” Gray said. “They’d been putting it on us for a long time, so it’s nice to get two years in a row.”
Prior to last year’s 48-0 win, the Lions hadn’t beaten Stroud since 2008, when Gray was their quarterback, but they’ve exorcised a lot demons in the last 96 minutes of football.
“I wanted us to come out and play very fast, play at our own speed,” Gray said. “I liked that our intensity stayed up even when we got up.
“I didn’t want us to get up by 14 or 21 and be satisfied and let it hang around. I wanted us to put the gas pedal down. I think we did a good job with that, and they did it fast.”
Hill’s 42-yard scoring run down the left sideline was the first big play, but hardly the last.
He was back in the end zone less than five minutes later on a 10-yard run, followed by a oneyard plunge for a score by quarterback Kaden Jones and a long touchdown pass to Stefaun Mackey, making it 27-0.
The second half looked much like the first, with Hill bursting 53 yards for a score on the second play of the third period and scoring again just two plays later following a recovered kickoff.
That made it 40-0 and signalled the end of the night for Chandler’s starters.
“I’m sure when we watch film we’ll see a ton of things,” Gray said.” I know we had a lot of mistakes. We hit some really good throws tonight, but we missed some throws, too.
“The good thing is we responded. We talked about things at half time and came out and responded. Guys are being very coachable and that makes everything a lot more fun.
On the other sideline, Stroud head coach Josh Presley congratulated Chandler and praised his team’s effort.
“Our kids played hard and I couldn’t be prouder of them,” he said. “Chandler has a good team and they did a good job.”
“On defense, we played hard through the night - we just have to keep getting better.”
Now 0-2 after losses to Meeker and Chandler, the Tigers travel to Prague this week to face their third straight Lincoln County foe.
Prague is 2-0 after rolling past Luther and Henryetta the first two weeks.
“We just have to keep controlling what we can control amd keep on improving,” Presley said.
“The biggest thing is to keep getting better, working on craft and the things we can control.