Back in the groove

It was just like the good old days – maybe even better.

Coming off two straight losses, the Spokane Shock (2-2) routed the Lubbock Renegades 63-26 Saturday night in arenafootball2 action in front of a sold-out Arena crowd of 10,565.

“We’ve been humbled the past couple weeks,” Shock coach Adam Shackleford said. “And we’ve realized that on any given day you can win or lose a football game.”

Lubbock (0-3) charged down the field to score a touchdown on the opening drive of the game.

After throwing two incomplete passes, Renegades quarterback Justin Midgett connected with Alvan Robinson for a 13-yard score and Lubbock took a quick 7-0 lead.

On the ensuing drive, Antwone Savage put the Shock in good position with a 15-yard kick return.

Quarterback Andrico Hines led the Shock into Renegade territory, completing a 16-yard pass to Savage. Two plays later, Savage pulled in a 6-yard pass to put the Shock on the board. John Koker missed the extra-point attempt, and Lubbock held a 7-6 lead.

But the Renegades wouldn’t lead for much longer.

Lubbock failed to make it past its 5-yard line on their second possession.

Jerome Stevens stopped a pass play on second-and-10 and Nygel Rogers broke up a pass on the following play. On fourth down, Kelvin Morris blocked Lubbock’s field-goal attempt and Katon Bethay recovered the loose ball on the 5-yard line. Ben Brown ran in the ball in on first-and-goal and the Shock went ahead 12-7 and never trailed again.

Spokane took over on its 21-yard line after stopping Lubbock’s next scoring drive and brought the ball to the 25 before the end of the first quarter.

Then Raul Vijil took over.

On the first play of the second quarter, Hines found the receiver in the middle. Vijil dodged three defenders en route to the end zone for a 21-yard score.

Bethay, who finished with two TDs, scored on a 1-yard run for the Shock. Lubbock added another TD before Vijil worked his magic again.

Vijil caught a pass from Hines at midfield and darted his way through a handful of defenders to complete the 29-yard touchdown and the Shock took a 39-13 lead at halftime.

“They had a lot of deep guys on me and Andrico had a decent look at Antwone,” Vijil said. “But Andrico made a good read and I just happened to make a good move and it worked out great for us.”

Savage turned in a dominating performance for the Shock. He finished with 75 yards on six receptions and scored four times. The standout receiver echoed many of his teammates thoughts on the win.

“This is what we came to do,” Savage said. “This is going to be a good confidence-builder for us. The past two games we didn’t lose because of other teams beating us, we were beating ourselves and tonight it came together for us.”

Hines threw for six touchdowns, completing 17 of 31 passes for 192 yards.

Even more impressive than the explosive offense was the Shock’s stubborn defense.

Defensive Player of the Game Rob Keefe picked off Midgett twice, scoring the final TD of the game off one of his interceptions. Keefe, Alex Teems and the defensive line held the Renegades to 190 yards.

“When the offense puts up points like that it makes our job a lot easier,” Keefe said. “We just try and do what we’re supposed to on defense – fly around and make our stops – and this is just going to continue.”

Shackleford called the defense the difference between last week’s loss to Fort Wayne and this week’s crushing victory.

“We missed 32 tackles last week and less than 10 this week,” he said. “At least for one game, I’m happy.”

One area of concern for Shackleford might be that kicker John Koker missed a field-goal attempt and six of nine extra points, including the last four tries.