Richmond-Burton goes up-tempo in 2nd half, rallies for KRC victory against Marengo

MARENGO – You practice how you want to play.

It took a little while for Richmond-Burton to follow that mantra Friday, but once it did, it looked every bit the part of a surging football team.

Richmond-Burton’s offense played up-tempo throughout the second half, wearing down a stout Marengo effort and leading the Rockets to a 35-21 Kishwaukee River Conference win.

Richmond-Burton, winners of five in a row to move to 6-2 overall and 5-1 in the KRC, scored on its first four drives in the second half in order to erase a rough first half.

And it did so by getting back to how it wanted to play – fast, faster and fastest.

“That’s what we talked about at halftime, that’s how we’ve been practicing the last four weeks,” R-B coach Mike Noll said. “Go up-tempo and as fast as we can. It served us well. I think it helps us focus, and we just felt like we had more depth than them. We were trying to wear them out.”

It worked well with Hunter Carley rushing for 95 of his game-high 156 yards and two touchdowns after halftime. Luke Johnson tallied all 50 of his rushing yards after the break while adding two scores.

The first drive of the second half set that tone. Down 14-7 after an outstanding first half from Marengo (4-4, 3-3), Richmond-Burton went 67 yards in just more than three minutes with every play but one going for at least 4 yards. That included a 29-yard run by Riley Shea (82 yards, TD) and a 5-yard touchdown run by Carley.

With the win, R-B stayed in first place in the KRC with one game remaining against Plano. The Rockets clinched a playoff spot for the 17th straight season.

“I think it helped to get us back to what we know.” Carley said of the drive. “I think we tried getting a little too fancy in the first half, kind of because we had to. But once we went back to running the ball hard, the second half went real well.”

Marengo quarterback David Lopez didn’t wait to answer. On the third play of the next drive, he took a keeper and used his vision to break a 69-yarder, giving Marengo one last lead at 21-14 with 7:26 left in the third quarter.

However, the momentum was drained by Richmond-Burton’s Jonhson, who scored consecutive touchdowns of 13 and 1 yards to give the Rockets a lead at 28-21 with 8:14 to play.

“Going into halftime, the body language, clearly we were all down,” Johnson said. “We had to lock in and get back to it in the second half. That first touchdown really brought up the energy. It showed us we could come back in this game and win it.”

Marengo’s next drive was thwarted by a key penalty, allowing the Rockets to take over and secure the game with a 35-yard scoring run from Carley.

The second half erased what was a great first half from Marengo. While the defense limited R-B to 87 yards, Lopez methodically led two big scoring drives, the first ending in a 30-yard touchdown pass to Alten Bergbreiter and the second on a 7-yard run by Connor Sacco.

Lopez was 22-of-34 passing for 168 yards while adding 128 rushing yards on 15 carries.

“Late in the third, we started to really wear down, lost a couple of guys, and I think that was the difference here,” Marengo coach Paul Forsythe said. “We had every chance. … Just late in the game we sputtered on offense.”