By MONTE DUTTON

One hundred. Sixty. Four.

Clinton’s 35-8 victory over Laurens on Friday night was the 100^th of Corey Fountain’s head coaching career, the 60^th all-time against the Raiders and the fourth in a row.

The town was coming off a devastating downtown fire. An historic section of Musgrove Street went up as if a missile had landed. (Let’s not encourage the conspiracy theorists. It didn’t.)

About 6,500 paid their way in, and the majority forgot their problems for a while.

“Our coaches never wavered in preparation for this game,” Fountain said. “Our players never wavered. Our team played really disciplined, and I’m proud of that. I’m proud of the way we took some shots early in the game and gave some shots back. I still want to close out better and get it in the end zone better.

“Best wishes to [Laurens]. They’re a good football team that’s well-coached. Coach (Greg) Porter’s going to get them going in the right direction. We were just super resilient. Our conditioning paid off, and we were still fresh at the end of the game.”

Clinton (1-1) dominated the stats, running up 409 yards of offense to 171 by Laurens (0-2). The Red Devils piled up 27 first downs to the Raiders’ 10.

Red Devil runners wielded a sizzling fork of diversity and balance. Eight rushed, six of them – Javen Cook (15 carries, 89 yards), Angelo Cromer (6-63), D.J. Clark (7-50), Rhett Gilliam (9-35), Kason Copeland (5-35) and K.J. Vance (8-27) – quite notably.

Cook scored on rushes of 16, 10 and 13 yards.

Quarterback Tushawan Richardson connected on 4/8 passes for 82 yards. Two produced touchdowns on a 42-yard bomb to Chris Boyd and 25-yarder to Devin Swindler.

The centerpiece of a stout Clinton offensive line, center Rion Gordon, said, “We had four good days of practice. We played with intensity. It’s Laurens week. It’s easy to bring the intensity when it’s such an important game. I loved practice this week.”

A former Raider, Maison Tinsley, helped break it open with a third-quarter interception of LDHS’s J.T. Campbell.

“What brought me to Clinton was just the quality of the program,” Tinsley said. “Laurens is developing a program. Clinton has a program that’s already developed.

“After we lost to Woodruff, we really put in that work.”

The Red Devils weren’t perfect. They trailed, 8-7, after a quarter and coughed up two fumbles. The lone Laurens score was a four-yard run by Nehemias Fernandez, topped by a Demayajah Watts’ conversion run with 5:27 left in the period.

Fernandez led Laurens with 88 rushing yards in 15 carries.

But Laurens had one punt blocked and another deflected. The Raiders fumbled possession away four times, and the game was costly. Laurens quarterback Will Thompson went down early with a shoulder injury, and backup Campbell suffered a concussion late.

All that duly noted, Clinton dominated in most every way. The Red Devil defense, maligned for its performance in the 40-36 opening loss to Woodruff, held the Raiders to fewer yards than Hillcrest in its opening-week shutout of Laurens.

It was impressive. Clinton was emphatically back.

“It’s disappointing and disheartening,” said Laurens head coach Greg Porter. “We lost our starting quarterback. I hate it for us, and I hate it for his family. For us, that changes the ballgame. [Thompson] is an instrumental part of what we’re trying to do. He’s put in a lot of work to let us get to where we need to be.

“Our staff will be meeting this weekend to evaluate what we need to do. [The injury] was the turning point of the game.”

As Phil Kornblut noted on his Friday-night scoreboard show on radio, Clinton has a lot of rivalries. The Red Devils open the season against three schools – Woodruff (2-0), Laurens and Newberry (2-0) next – that they have been playing for more than a century and are less than a half hour’s drive away.

Laurens visits Belton-Honea Path (2-0) next.

It’s just the beginning.

As Merle Haggard sang, “If we can make it through December, everything’s gonna be all right, I know.”

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