{"id":54815,"date":"2016-09-01T18:02:54","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T01:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=54815"},"modified":"2016-09-01T23:36:45","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T06:36:45","slug":"azusa-pacific-vs-west-texas-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/?p=54815","title":{"rendered":"Cougars Overpower West Texas A&M in Opener"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Big<\/a>

Big night for the Cougar defense holding West Texas A&M to ten points. (Photo by Duane Barker)<\/p><\/div>\n

By Tim Peterson<\/p>\n

(Glendora) – Kurt Scoby scored\u00a0two touchdowns and the defense did the\u00a0the rest as Azusa Pacific beat West Texas A&M 28-10 Thursday Night to open the 2016\u00a0campaign at Citrus College.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Scoby finished\u00a0with 122 yards overall on 17 carries with the pair of scores. The sophomore did all of this behind a y0ung offensive line\u00a0that impressed Cougar head coach Victor Santa Cruz .<\/p>\n

“It’s great to see. That’s a young O-line, they’re big\u00a0and they were able to wear guys out. Obviously Scoby and Fanua ran extremely hard,”\u00a0Santa Cruz said. “It’s a younger but athletic offense and they’re getting better.”<\/p>\n

The Cougars opened the scoring with a stop in the\u00a0end zone for a safety in the first quarter. Five minutes later\u00a0Scoby scored on a 12-yard run\u00a0for an 8-0 lead.<\/p>\n

Connor\u00a0Hollabaugh booted\u00a0a 39-yard field goal\u00a0for West Texas A&M in the second quarter to make it 8-3 but\u00a0Jaime Cacciatore countered with a 39-yard kick of his own.<\/p>\n

\"Kurt<\/a>

Kurt Scoby found paydirt twice in APU’s victory. (Photo by Duane Barker)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Cougars took an 11-3 lead into the break at halftime.<\/p>\n

Scoby had 49 yards on 10 carries at the half while\u00a0Andrew Elffers, who earned the start at quarterback was just\u00a03 for 6 for 16 yards through the air and\u00a0rushed for 25 yards\u00a0on\u00a08 carries.<\/p>\n

In the second half\u00a0Scoby capped a\u00a0Cougs drive with a 21-yard TD run\u00a0breaking several tackles along the way for an 18-3 lead at the 11:41 mark of the third.<\/p>\n

The Buffaloes answered with a drive on the ensuing series that Devon Paye finished with a 15-yard run to cut the Cougar lead to 18-10.<\/p>\n

Cacciatore drilled the uprights again with a 45-yarder to\u00a0put APU up 21-10 late in the third quarter.<\/p>\n

In the fourth Samuela Fanua\u00a0iced it with an\u00a011-yard run with just over three minutes left for a 28-10 advantage.<\/p>\n

During the drive capped by Fanua the APU O-Line\u00a0that Santa Cruz mentioned just overpowered the West Texas A&M front as the Cougars ate up the clock.<\/p>\n

For the Buffaloes\u00a0Ethan Brinkley\u00a0completed 29 of 46 for 233 yards but he was intercepted twice\u00a0by the APU defense. The Cougars held\u00a0West Texas to\u00a0just 56 total rushing yards.<\/p>\n

For Azusa Pacific\u00a0Fanua\u00a0added 61 yards and the fourth quarter touchdown\u00a0and Elffers finished\u00a0with 32 on 10 carries. The Maranatha product managed the game efficiently\u00a0with no turnovers while\u00a0completing 10 of 17 for 68 yards. Ethan Zeidler\u00a0had three catches for 36 yards.<\/p>\n

Mykai Walker and Aaron Berry led the\u00a0APU D with 10 tackles each. Jonathan Thropay\u00a0had eight and Hunter\u00a0Malberg added six.<\/p>\n

“It was good to see them (the defense) flying around and create turnovers.\u00a0That’s what we want,” added Santa Cruz.<\/p>\n

Next up for the Cougars is a trip to Humboldt State on Saturday September 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tim Peterson (Glendora) – Kurt Scoby scored\u00a0two touchdowns and the defense did the\u00a0the rest as Azusa Pacific beat West Texas A&M 28-10 Thursday Night to open the 2016\u00a0campaign at Citrus College.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[871],"tags":[3827,8101,1652,12236,12237,3798,11561,12235],"class_list":["post-54815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college","tag-andrew-elffers","tag-azusa-pacific-football","tag-citrus-college","tag-connor-hollabaugh","tag-devon-paye","tag-kurt-scoby","tag-samuela-fanua","tag-west-texas-a-m-football"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54815"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54851,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54815\/revisions\/54851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/midvalleysports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}