The Kentwood High School football team entered last night’s showdown with Auburn Riverside with a monkey on its back and a chip on its shoulder. Being humbled in consecutive weeks by South Puget Sound League North Division heavyweights Auburn and Tahoma can do that to a team.

The Conquerors exorcised that demon on a wet and rainy Auburn Memorial Stadium turf. Running back Darius Coleman rushed 11 times for 151 yards and a touchdown, quarterback Luke Anegevine added two perfectly thrown scores, and the Kentwood defense delivered a downright dominating performance as the Conquerors unloaded on Auburn Riverside 52-0 in an SPSL North game between playoff hopefuls.

The tradition-rich Conquerors entered the night without a league win and proceeded to take out much of their early-season frustrations on the Ravens.

“Starting 0-3 in league, that’s never happened in our program before,” said Angevine, who completed two of fouir passes for 87 yards and the two touchdowns. “We were reminded of that before the game. We didn’t want to be the first Kentwood program to go 0-3 in league. That was motivation for us, for sure.”

It was Kentwood’s most lopsided victory since ripping Kent-Meridian 62-0 in 2004. With the win, Kentwood (1-1, 1-2) remains very much in the hunt for one of the division’s four playoff berths.

On the flipside, however, was Auburn Riverside (1-2, 2-2), which spun its wheels all night, but seldom got anywhere.

The Ravens mustered just 91 yards of total offense, fumbled the ball five times, of which they lost three, and never got any closer to scoring than Kentwood’s 28-yard line.

“I think, early on, we had some penalties, key mistakes and some turnovers,” lamented Auburn Riverside coach Bob Morgan. “And I think it just snowballed from there. We need to be able to overcome that and we weren’t able to do that tonight.”