Shock cruise in af2 opener
Spokane opened its 2009 arenafootball2 season in familiar fashion, thumping Stockton 59-42 at the Arena.
Read on below for my unedited game story that will run in Saturday's S-R. (I'm going to try something new here. I'm going to post stats below the game story and see if I can get it coded correctly. OK, four attempts later, it didn't work. So I'll try to link to the stats Saturday morning!).
By
Staff writer
That looked familiar.
Raul Vijil finding the end zone, Nick Davila firing touchdown passes and the defense coming up with key stops.
“As usual, we had great support and I know everybody wanted one more point, but we just weren’t able to get it,” said head coach Adam Shackleford, referring to the promotion where fans receive a free chalupa when
But Vijil was clobbered as he tried to catch a pass at the 5 and the ball popped into the arms of the Lightning linebacker Jay Hunt.
“I did get some big eyes and I fumbled it around a little bit,” McCullough said, “but I was able to come down to it.”
Vijil and af2 rookie Charles Dillon, a
“I got smacked,” said Vijil, who scored four touchdowns receiving and one rushing. “One guy was supposed to take me, but I fought through it and got open.”
“That’s something you practice and you get that timing down,” Vijil said. “I was with Davila all last year. It’s kind of nice having a quarterback come back. We haven’t had that here.”
If it wasn’t over by then, the Shock defense sealed the deal with another goal-line stop. After Collins’ 45-yard run to the Shock 2, McCullough made two straight tackles and Collins tossed two incomplete passes, the latter batted away by Sergio Gilliam.
“It felt like playing outdoors again,” McCullough said. “
Davila passed for 228 yards and six touchdowns. Vijil, Andy Olson and Dillon combined for 17 catches.
“It’s a real fast game, that’s the biggest part, getting used to the speed of the game,” Dillon said. “I remember I told (Davila) during our preseason game that I could barely hear him. He told me, ‘If you can barely hear me now, you really aren’t going to be able to hear me when it’s a real game.’ Our crowd was great.”