Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com – Action from Saturday’s game at the Redwood Bowl

College of the Redwoods secured a second consecutive home bowl game with a second straight shutout victory on Saturday afternoon.

Hosting Siskiyous in their regular-season finale at the Redwood Bowl, the Corsairs won 42-0.

And they did it with another outstanding performance on the defensive side of the ball, including a pair of fumble recoveries returned for touchdowns.

“Our defense played exactly how I expected,” head coach Jason White said. “The defense has been kind of the foundation of our team the whole year and did a great job again today.”

After also shutting out Gavilan 76-0 last weekend, the Corsairs will carry plenty of momentum into a bowl game in two weeks time, when they likely will host Hartnell at the Redwood Bowl.

Last season, the Corsairs lost 42-21 to Monterey Peninsula in the Grizzly Bowl and they have not won a bowl game since a 1993 victory over San Mateo.

White and his players, however, will be eager to end that drought in two weeks.

“We’re very focused on breaking that 30-year streak,” the head coach said. “We definitely want to get that monkey off our back.”

If they continue to play as well as they did on Saturday, they have every reason to believe they will.

The wet conditions caused both teams problems early on, but the Corsairs would settle into the game.

They opened the scoring on a 12-yard Emmanuel Igbonogwam TD run with 4:39 remaining in the first quarter and carried a 14-0 lead into halftime after Lane Branstetter recovered a fumble and took it 44 yards to the end zone in the final minute of the first half.

CR added three touchdowns in the third quarter to pull away, the first on a 39-yard pass from Max Hough to receiver Anthony Aguirre.

Check out Emmanuel Igbonogwam’s 12-yard TD run below …

The TD pass was the 40th of Hough’s college career, which is a school record.

OJ Mosley scored CR’s second TD on defense just six seconds later, recovering a fumble and taking it 20 yards to the end zone.

Levi Cox-Cooley would add a four-yard TD run before the end of the third, and Carson Tucker closed out the scoring early in the fourth on an eight-yard TD run.

With their starting quarterback suffering an injury last week, the Eagles did not pass once the entire game and were held to just 37 yards rushing.

The Corsairs, on the other other hand, rushed for 244 yards with several running backs contributing, in particular Igbonogwam and Cox-Cooley.

Igbonogwam ran for 61 yards on nine carries, while Cox-Cooley gained 51 yards on six carries.

Hough also had success running the ball and finished with 48 yards on seven carries, while Jordyn Bowers finished with 23 yards on three carries and Levi Nyberg added 20 yards on three carries.

“Our whole running back core ran the ball well today,” said White, who added “it was a good effort up front from the offensive line.”

Right tackle Joey Quen suffered an injury in the first quarter and was sidelined the rest of the afternoon, although he is expected back in time for the upcoming bowl game.

Hunter Kralj did a good job filling in and the unit did not skip a beat.