IOWA CITY - It might be hard for Cedar Rapids Kennedy to play an effective game of "This Little Piggy" this week.

The Cougars shot off most of their toes in a failed bid to upset No.6 Iowa City West Friday at Trojan Stadium. West won, 41-14, making the most of five Kennedy turnovers.

"We shot ourselves in the foot too many times," senior quarterback Derek Jacobus said. "And they capitalized on our mistakes."

Jacobus threw two interceptions and the Cougars fumbled the ball three times. Three of the turnovers led to touchdowns for the Trojans.

"We shot ourselves in the foot so many times, we just gave them the game," junior running back Logan Wedo said. "We can't give them the ball and let them score like that."

Iowa City West (3-0, 1-0) had heard all week about the Kennedy (2-1, 0-1) rushing attack, but felt it could run the ball pretty well, too.

The Trojans finished with 311 yards on 36 carries, led by quarterback Nate Boland, who had 118 yards and four touchdowns on 12 tries. Boland also threw for 151 yards on 11-of-15 passing.

Devin Raffensperger had 74 yards on 10 carries and Kevin Dowell had 74 yards on five totes.

"All week long we heard Kennedy was going to ground and pound, that type of thing," West Coach Brian Sauser said. "We think we run the football pretty well too. We just do it a little differently."

While Kennedy gets most of its yardage out of the Power-I and Stacked-I - the Cougars rolled up 270 rushing yards on 51 carries - the Trojans use the pistol as their base offense and morph into several other sets.

"We knew the one thing we couldn't have them do was ground-hog it," Sauser said.

Things looked good early for Kennedy. West High had its only turnover, a fumble in the red zone that killed an opening drive.

The Cougars started with a 33-yard run by Miles Moa to midfield and drove to the Trojan 13 before two penalties - a holding call and a motion infraction - helped stall the drive.

"We know we're a good football team," Jacobus said. "We had our drives, we just didn't score. The scoreboard didn't say the whole game.

"We've got to finish, we know that."

West High took over on downs at its own 29 and three big pass plays later was at the Kennedy 16. That's where Boland ran it in to make it 7-0.

Then, on the next offensive play for Kennedy, a fumble gave the ball right back to West. The Cougars held defensively, but then fumbled the punt return at their own 5-yard-line.

Two plays later Boland scored again to make it 14-0.

"When you play a good football team, you definitely can't turn it over five times," Kennedy Coach Tim Lewis said. "We gave them great field position on that punt early in the game. You can't give a team like them momentum. We said that going in."

Kennedy had been able to come-from-behind to win the first two weeks, but couldn't keep up with the Trojans.

"We left way too many points on the board, and we gave them too many points," Jacobus said. "It's a totally different game, I think, if it's Week 9."

West High led 21-0 at half and converted an interception into a quick touchdown to start the third quarter on a 38-yard run by Kevin Dowell.

The Cougars showed a little of that second-half fight by scoring on the next possession. Wedo scored on a 28-yard run to make it 28-7 with 6:58 left in the third quarter.

Wedo led the Cougars with 146 yards on 23 carries, all in the second half. Miles Moa had all the first-half carries from the I-back spot and had 56 yards on 9 carries, despite coming into the game nursing an ankle injury.

Jacobus had 44 yards on 10 carries and 67 passing yards.

"Offensively, overall, I thought we played pretty sound," Lewis said. "We did the things we do best. But we were inside the 20 three or four times and came out of there with zero points. Like turnovers, we can't do that.

"But I liked the way we ran the ball."

The glimmer of hope continued when the Cougar defense forced a turnover on downs near midfield and the Kennedy offense drove to the West High 25-yard line, but another fumble ended that drive.

"In the second half, we tried to bounce back, but made some of the same mistakes," Wedo said. "We're not thinking. There were a couple of physical fumbles, but mostly mental mess-ups.

"We give the ball right to them, and then make stupid mistakes."

It was 41-7 before Kennedy got a late touchdown from Wedo.

"It's our third game, and we learned some stuff tonight," Lewis said. "We'll go from there."

Kennedy had 18 first downs to 22 for West, and those 270 rushing yards to 311 for West. Too many things went wrong for the Cougars to pull off an upset.

"We can play with good football teams," Lewis said. "The score doesn't look like it was that close of a game.

"But look at the big picture. We're a good football team, and we can play with the best. We proved that to ourselves - if nobody else - tonight."

Kennedy has a short week, having to turn around and face Dubuque Senior (1-2) Thursday at Kingston Stadium.

"We've got to come back next week and get better," Wedo said.

IOWA CITY WEST 41, KENNEDY 14

CRK        ICW
First downs                18             22
Rushes-yards            51-270      36-311
Passing yards              67            151
Comp-Att-Int           7-15-2      11-15-0
Fumbles-lost               4-3            2-1
Punts-avg.               2-39.0       3-34.0
Penalties-yards          4-35           6-51

Kennedy               0   0  7   7  - 14
Iowa City West     14  7  7  13 -  41

Scoring plays

ICW - Nate Boland 16 run (Connor Gordon kick).
ICW - Boland 3 run (Gordon kick).
ICW - Micah Kelsay 16 run (Gordon kick).
ICW - Kevin Dowell 38 run (Gordon kick).
CRK - Logan Wedo 28 run (Mark Schulz kick).
ICW - Boland 26 run (kick failed).
ICW - Boland 5 run (Gordon kick).
CRK - Wedo 1 run (Schulz kick).

Individual Statistics

Rushing
Kennedy - Logan Wedo 23-146, Miles Moa 9-56, Derek Jacobus 10-44, Terrence Hall 9-24.
IC West - Nate Boland 12-118, Devin Raffensperger 10-74, Kevin Dowell 5-74, Micah Kelsay 3-17, Anthony Batie 1-18, Clay Moel 4-8, Conner Greene 1-2.

Passing
Kennedy - Derek Jacobus 7-15-67-2.
IC West - Nate Boland 11-15-151-0.

Receiving
Kennedy - Jacob Shannon 4-33, Jay Blank 3-34.
IC West - Anthony Batie 4-89, Oliver Martin 3-27, Micah Kelsay 2-53, Devin Raffensperger 2-minus 18.