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FLOWOOD – It was all even after 40 minutes, but the second half was a different story Tuesday night at Northwest Rankin.

The home-standing Cougars hit Oak Grove with two quick goals in the first six minutes of the second period and rolled to a 3-0 win in the Class 6A boys soccer state semifinals.

Top-ranked Northwest Rankin (24-0-1) advanced to the state finals for the eighth time and will face Clinton at 6 p.m. Saturday at Ridgeland High School. Oak Grove finished its season 16-3.

“I think both teams were kind of feeling each other out in the first half,” said Northwest Rankin coach Chris Gardener. 

“These were two really evenly matched teams, and I thought the wind (in the second half) was a factor; it kept the ball down in our end of the field. Our kids got a couple of good looks early and they took advantage of them.”

The two teams were dead even in the first half, with the Warriors getting the game’s first chance on goal in the fourth minute of play.

Indeed, Oak Grove had the best chance of either team in the first half, when Warrior senior Luke Dickson banged a free kick from 25 yards out off the crossbar in the 33rd minute. 

Junior Broc Bookout also had a good chance in the final minute of the period with a hard shot that Cougar senior goalkeeper Jaromir Saloni fielded with difficulty.

“I knew we had to play our best game and I don’t think we did,��� said Oak Grove coach Jess Lang. “When you get a chance to finish, you’ve got to finish. A goal early changes the whole outcome of the game, but we just couldn’t get things to fall.”

After the first 40 minutes, each team had eight shots, with NWR getting four on goal and OG with three on frame.

“I think we were just as capable of beating them this time as we were when we played them before,” said Oak Grove junior forward Cade Ortego. 

“I don’t think they were that much better than we were; we have as much talent as they do. It just came down to that second half. I think they wanted it a little more than we did.”

Indeed, the second half started off wrong for the Warriors and never got better.

Less than a minute into the period, the Cougars played a longball into the 18-yard box and their two offensive standouts, seniors Rory Humphrey and Miguel Magagnin went to work.

Magagnin played the ball onto the feet of Humphrey, who had a point-blank look in front of Warrior junior keeper Josh Goodwinn and rammed the shot into the net for the first score of the game.

“The first goal was crazy,” said Humphrey, the Cougars’ leading scorer with 26 goals. “I didn’t expect the ball there. Miguel played me a great ball, I yelled for it very loudly, it just hit off the top of my foot and rolled in.”

Five minutes later, Magagnin took another longball and beat the Warrior defense for another close-in shot that got past Goodwinn.

“They’re a good team,” said Gardener. “It was really a good game, and I’m very proud of my kids.”

Oak Grove found the going much tougher on the offensive end in the second half, as the Cougars marked Dickson and Ortego with two men every time they got the ball in the front half.

“We’re not a longball, airball team,” said Lang. “We’ve got to get the ball down on the ground, and we started off the second half popping everything up in the air. They were winning the 50-50s and getting chances.

“We talked the last three days that their best chances would come on throw-ins and corners. We defended early, then let their guy get behind us. They played one off one guy, played it off another and got both of them in, because they kept coming.” 

Oak Grove did not get a shot of any sort in the second half until the 55th minute and the first shot on goal didn’t come until more than halfway through the period.

The Warriors had a good chance in the 68th minute, pressing forward on a free kick from 25 yards out, but the shot never made it on goal and the Cougars got the ball to senior midfielder Tucker Jones who fed Magagnin for the final score of the game.

“Really, what it comes down to is they play a different style,” said Ortego. “They’d kick it long when their defenders got it and we can only do so much. We tried to pressure them, but they were just kicking it long to their strikers.”

Northwest Rankin finished with six shots in the second half and five were on-goal. Oak Grove had just two shots on goal in the second half and five for the game.

“They were much more physical than we were,” said Lang. “There was a lot of pushing and shoving. They were pretty subtle about it, and they got away with it a lot.”

The Cougars will be going for their fifth state title in Gardener’s 25 seasons at Northwest Rankin when they take the field on Saturday.

“We’re familiar with the state finals,” said Gardener. 

Meanwhile, Lang will ride into retirement after 22 seasons as the Warriors’ head coach, and he already has his future laid out for him.

“I’m going to catch up on 37 years of honey-do projects,” said Lang.