After a bye week, the Bakersfield College Renegades took their No. 2 ranking to Santa Maria to take on the Allan Hancock Bulldogs and came away with another victory 29-7.
After going 4-0, the Renegades – now 5-1 and 1-0 in conference – lost to nationally ranked No. 1 Mt. San Antonio College, then took a much needed bye week and bounced back with a strong showing against the Bulldogs.
“I think it helped a lot, we certainly had a lot to work on, and still have a lot to work on. We took that extra time and used it to prepare for Hancock,” said head coach Jeff Chudy. “It also gives everybody a chance to take a deep breath and kind of evaluate where your at.
“For our guys, it gave them a chance to kind of heal up a little bit, because we had some guys that were a little banged up.
“It’s a grind right now. We’ve got four more games and the Ventura game is extremely huge, so it certainly came at the right time of the year,” he said.
Starting quarterback Lyle Negron spoke about how the team faired against Hancock.
“We played all right, good enough to win. But we have to play better for the next teams, like Ventura and El Camino. These teams will be a lot better,” he said. “We just need to be more consistent running and passing the ball.”
Chudy reflected on how the offensive line played against the Bulldogs.
“Well, I think by far, we played our best game upfront in terms of controlling the line of scrimmage and being able to run the football,” he said. “That was something that we challenged our offensive line and they stepped up to the challenge.
“They took a lot of pride in what they were doing and we were able to kind of mix things up quite a bit and it was something that we needed to do going into league play,” Chudy said.
As for the defense, Chudy mentioned how the game plan went accordingly.
“We put them in long yard situations and we didn’t give up many long plays. I think the longest run play they had was something like 10 yards,” he said. “When you take a team that has a certain way of playing the game, and you take that away from them, that creates some inconsistency on their part and they could just never get into a rhythm.”
Negron went 10-of-12 for 64 yards with 12 carries for 25 yards and three touchdowns.
Negron talked about the most important part of his big game.
“I felt all right, but we won the game. That’s all that matters to me,” he said.
Running backs Julian Dean-Johnson and Andre Smith missed early action due to violating team rules.
Dean- Johnson sat out the first quarter, while Smith missed the first half.
Dean-Johnson ended up with 13 carries for 77 yards and one touchdown and also completed a 70-yard pass for one of the biggest plays of the game. Smith had eight carries for 32 yards.
Chudy talked about the two players being benched.
“There are life lessons to be learned in everything that we do and those guys had a little hiccup in their giddy-up and they’ve learned from it and they played extremely hard when they got a chance to play,” said Chudy. “We expect those guys to be team leaders from here on out.”
Chudy mentioned what the team needs to do to get better.
“Offensively we have to control the ball, try to keep these guys off the field as much as we can and continue to try and protect the ball,” he said. “When we’ve been successful, we’ve been on the plus side of the column in the turnover margin.”
Hopefully we can continue to do well in the kicking game, which has been an area that we’ve been pretty successful in.”
Up next for the Renegades are the Ventura College Pirates.
“Ventura’s quarterback is a Denard Robinson/Michael Vick type of guy, and he just gives you fits, we’re going to have to contain him,” said Chudy.
“Basically everything runs through him, and he’s an 800-yard rusher and I think he leads our conference in rushing now.”