Harrison McClary/N&O
UT Chattanooga Mocs freshman running back Ailym Ford dashed for 195 yards, seven shy of the school record as the team downed the Western Carolina Catamounts 60-36. “Honestly, those aren’t my yards, those are the offensive lines’ yards. We work together, and we’re a team. We just keep pushing and work hard.”; Ford.
The Mocs exploded in the second half, putting 31 points on the board. Both Ford, 195 yards, and Elijah Ibitokun-Hanks, 125 yards, had over 100 yard rushing games. Ibitokun-Hanks had his 10th career game with 100+ yards, a first at UTC. His longest run of the day, a 73 yard TD run was doubly impressive as he ran the last 40 yards with a pulled hamstring.
Mocs head coach Rusty Wright said “I don’t know if we’ll score 60 points every time, but we can run the football. We have good enough guys to block up front. We took shots when we were able to take shots and threw it when we were able to throw it. We can do some things offensively, but we can’t start like how we started. Could you imagine if we started well? We had a plan to run the football and those two guys [Ailym Ford and Elijah Ibitokun-Hanks] ran hard. I was pleased with those guys. Anytime you score 60 points, I don’t care how you get it, it’s awesome. I told our guys Monday and before we played today, that this was going to be one of the hardest games we’ll play all year to win. I knew it was going to be like this. Thankfully, we gave ourselves an opportunity to score a bunch of points. We made stops when we needed to make stops defensively, and that’s all that matters.”
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