Twisters Beat OK City and Look to Clinch home playoff game with win

July 21, 2007 - arenafootball2 (af2)
Arkansas Diamonds News Release


(Oklahoma City, OK) - The Arkansas Twisters defeated Oklahoma City 58-28 in front of 8220 fans at the Ford Center and learned after the game Arkansas can host a first round playoff game with a win in their regular season finale.

Arkansas started the scoring in the first quarter with help from its defense. The Twisters stopped Oklahoma City on fourth down, and the offense turned it into points when Jon Schoonover caught an eight yard pass from Brian Villanueva to give the Twisters the early lead.

The Twisters stopped the Yard Dawgz again on fourth down when Colby Clark sacked Oklahoma City quarterback Stan Hill. Arkansas scored on the next play when Terrance Freeney ran the ball three yards for the touchdown and the extra point put the Twisters up 14-0.

Oklahoma City answered with their first touchdown of the game when Jarrail Jackson ran the ball in from five yards out to cut the Twisters lead in half through the first quarter.

Arkansas began the second quarter with a bizarre play. Villanueva threw down field on third down from his own 17 yard line and Robert Kilow made a circus style catch in the endzone where the ball bounced off the wall, off the defender, but never appeared to touch the ground. The officials conversed about the play and awarded the Twisters the score and the extra point put Arkansas up 21-7.

Oklahoma City drove down field on the ensuing drive and had the ball first goal at the eight yard line. Hill's short pass was intercepted by Jason Simpson and returned 41 yards for the touchdown. The extra point put Arkansas up 28-7 in the second and the Twisters led 28-14 at halftime.

The Yard Dawgz closed within one score when they opened the second half with a touchdown. Allan Krutulis capped a long drive with a one yard run to pull Oklahoma City within 28-21.

Arkansas ran off four unanswered touchdowns to pull away. Villanueva finished the game by completing 12 of his 28 passes for 148 yards, four touchdowns and one interception. Robert Kilow had five catches for 58 yards and one touchdown. He eclipsed 1000 yards receiving for the season, joining Schoonover as the only set of Twisters teammates to accomplish the feat in the same season. Simpson finished the game with a game high 11.5 tackles, two interceptions, one returned for a touchdown and three pass breakups. He upped his season total to 132.0 tackles for the season to break the af2 record set by Florida's Levy Brown the week before. Pierre Thomas finished with 10.5 tackles to give him 101.0 tackles on the season to become just the second set of teammates with 100 tackles in the same season in league history.

The Twisters learned after the game that Bossier-Shreveport and South Georgia both lost their respective games. Arkansas can clinch the fourth seed in the af2 Playoffs and a first round home game if they can defeat Amarillo at Alltel Arena in the regular season finale on Saturday, July 28.



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