Richards stuns Kankakee with late touchdown, advances to face East St. Louis

OAK LAWN — For the most part, the Kankakee football team was able to follow its game plan in Saturday’s Class 6A quarterfinal at Richards. The Kays were playing complementary football, allowing their defense to contain the Bulldogs and star running back Myles Mitchell to a relatively pedestrian afternoon by their lofty standards while leaning upon their own ground game offensively.

But the Kays saw a few big moments slip away while the Bulldogs made the big plays when they needed them, stunning the Kays 21-20 to advance to next weekend’s semifinal.

The loss ended Kankakee’s 10-game winning streak with a quarterfinal exit for the second straight year. Richards advances to face East St. Louis.

Like their 27-7 second round win over Bloomington, the Kays (10-2) were able to quickly erase a 7-0 deficit. Mitchell found the end zone first, a 3-yard score just over seven minutes into the first quarter to give the hosts a 7-0 lead. But the Kays were able to respond when James Stampley scored his first of three touchdowns, a 19-yarder, to knot the game at 7 apiece with 10:28 remaining in the first half.

Stampley paced the Kankakee backfield with 128 yards and three touchdowns on 22 carries, an effort head coach Miles Osei said was evidence of Stampley’s drive.

“He’s incredible,” Osei said of Stampley. “He has a motor that doesn’t stop and he played his butt off. He did a really good job.”

The Kays capitalized on a short field when Keyandre White recovered a Richards fumble deep in their own territory, allowing Stampley to score his second touchdown just three minutes later, a 5-yard run that made it a 14-7 with 7:24 left in the half.

That lead would hold until the closing minutes of the third quarter, when the Bulldogs took advantage of a Kays miscue and turned it into a touchdown. After a fumbled handoff exchange, Kays senior Zyon Turner attempted to scoop the ball off the turf, but after a wild bounce as he went to scoop it, Bulldogs junior defensive back Emmanuel Mahonie grabbed the loose ball and returned it 45 yards for a game-tying touchdown with 1:30 left.

Stampley’s answered with his third score, a 3-yard TD, but a missed extra point left the Kays with a 20-14 lead with 5:38 left.

And just 20 seconds later, that lead was gone.

On the second play of the ensuing drive, Noah Escobedo found junior wideout Jaiden Henry wide open for a 73-yard touchdown, with Anthony Sanchez’s extra point putting the Bulldogs up 21-20 with 5:18 on the clock.

It was Henry’s first and only catch on the day and the only Bulldogs completion of the day more than five yards down the field. But it couldn’t have come at a better time for them.

“We’ve had a lot of tough games this year so it was leading up to this moment,” Henry said. “We knew it was our drive, knew it was now or never and had to get into the end zone. Our coaches put confidence in the players and we made plays.”

The Kays had time to reclaim the lead again, but saw their drive stall out. Zeke Sherrod made a tremendous leaping catch on a 4th-and-7 pass from Phillip Turner that would have been good enough for a first down, but Sherrod wasn’t able to get a foot down in bounds. It led to a turnover on downs with 2:47 left, with the Bulldogs able to run out the remaining clock.

By and large, the Kays were able to execute in the ways they wanted to. Their running game was solid, as they ran for 229 yards as a team and saw all three of their touchdowns come from Stampley on the ground. They held Mitchell, a North Dakota State commit, relatively in check. After a three-score game in the second round, he found the endzone just once against the Kays and needed 30 carries to get 113 yards.

But the few mistakes they made were all capitalized on by the Bulldogs, who are in their third semifinal under head coach Tony Sheehan and eighth in program history while the Kays saw their playoff exit come in the quarters for the second time in as many years.

“It’s a game that I think we did a good job of preparing for,” Osei said. “We just ended up on the short end. ... It’s tough, but that’s the game of football.”

Mitchell had 30 carries for 113 yards and a touchdown, and was also 0-for-1 passing with an interception. Escobedo was 7-for-11 passing for 104 yards, a touchdown and an interception.