Butte overcomes early deficit, beats Chabot 34-21 in season opener
Team Stats
| Game Statistics | Chabot | Butte |
|---|---|---|
| Passing Yards | 107 | 177 |
| Rushing Yards | 185 | 264 |
| Turnovers | 3 | 0 |
| Time of Poss. | 24:26 | 35:34 |
BUTTE VALLEY >> It was the first quarter the Butte College football team didn't want. The second quarter was what the Roadrunners expect.
The defending state and national champions overcame a 14-0 deficit to Chabot after the opening period by clamping down on the Gladiators and ripping off 20 straight points before halftime including Damariay Drew's 33-yard interception return for the go-ahead score of a 34-21 victory in the season opener Saturday at Cowan Stadium.
"I think that was kind of a spark that we were looking for," Butte head coach Jeff Jordan said.
Marvell Harris stepped in the Roadrunners' leading role vacated by running back Kendall Williams after the latter fractured his right hip in a scrimmage, ending his season before it began. Harris finished with 136 yards on 17 carries with a 20-yard touchdown run with 5:17 left in the third quarter.
Harris' score punctuated a string of 27 unanswered points, squelching an upset bid of the top-ranked team in the state by 13th-ranked Chabot.
"We got better throughout the course of the game," Jordan said, "but we need to get a lot better than we are right now."
The Gladiators kept it entertaining, or at least within reach. Backup quarterback Tahir Mills raced around the left side for a 75-yard touchdown on the second play from scrimmage after Harris' score as Chabot, which was held scoreless for all of the second quarter and much of the third, needed 18 seconds for an answer.
The Gladiators nearly answered another touchdown even faster after Roadrunners quarterback Zach Kline accounted for his second score Saturday. Kline, a UC Berkeley transfer, completed 13 of 22 passes for 179 yards that included the first Butte touchdown, a 37-yard reception to Stephen Jerome after he got a step behind double-coverage and went up for the pass and came down with a bobbling catch in the end zone.
This time in the fourth quarter, Kline ran around the left side for his own TD, this one a 16-yard run, that put Butte back up by two scores with 11:26 left in the game.
Chabot returner Armani Washington took the ensuing kickoff past every Roadrunner but one — Jalen Amis. The wideout, who had two catches for 34 yards as part of Butte's nine-deep receiving corps, made his biggest play by tripping up Washington at the Butte 20.
That touchdown-saving tackle meant even more a play later, when an alert Malik Hopkins gave Butte the ball. Chabot tried a quick toss play but the ball bounced off tailback Christian Batiste and hit the ground. The Gladiators stopped, thinking the ball had gone forward, resulting in an incomplete shovel pass. Most of the Roadrunners followed Chabot's lead. But Hopkins, the Chico High grad, scooped up the live ball and made it back to the Gladiators' 41 before he was brought down after 34 yards.
While that possession didn't result in any points, more importantly it stopped a Chabot scoring opportunity while burning away more than 2 minutes and reversing field position. The Gladiators next drive started on their own 11 after Geordie Bunn's punt.
Bunn was part of a big day from the Roadrunners' special-teams unit. His first punt was a booming 68-yarder and he averaged 40 per kick, placing two inside the 20-yard line. Placekicker J.J. Waterman made both his field-goal attempts of 35 and 20 yards as the former distance was Butte's first points of the season that came with 14:10 left in the second quarter, and the chip shot occurred with 7 seconds before halftime for a 20-14 lead.
The Roadrunners had a chance for more, but the 15-play, 85-yard drive that consumed 5:55 of the clock, the most of Butte's scores, stalled at the Chabot 1 on second-and-goal.
"It was just a weird game," said Jordan said. "We would do something nice and ... ."
Chabot tried to speed up the pace of the game in the opening period, and it worked for a while. The Gladiators took the opening kickoff and proceeded to march down the field with a 10-play, 60-yard drive that ended on Batiste's 7-yard TD run with 10:57 left in the first quarter.
Then another TD, in part due to a Butte penalty on third-and-long gave the Gladiators a first down early on in the possession, made it 14-0 for the visitors.
"We have a lot of new people starting on defense," Drew said. "I think at the beginning of the game we were all just a little jittery. Once we got settled down, we started to play like we know we can play."
Butte had 57 yards of offense in the opening quarter and finished with 441, including 264 yards rushing on 51 carries.
Afternoon temperatures were in the 90s, and Butte, which practices in similar, if not warmer, conditions, never slowed down in the heat. The Hayward-based Gladiators did. Chabot had 140 yards of offense in the first quarter and finished with 152 more over the final three periods and nearly half of that was on Mills' 75-yard scamper.
"We're in shape. They were tired, real tired. We were able to keep pumping and that's when the momentum kicked in. That's when we separated ourselves," said Harris, who had 227 all-purpose yards. "It was wearing them out, wearing them out and kept wearing them out, and we finally wore them out enough and were able to punch them."
Connect with Sports Writer Joseph Shufelberger at 896-7774.