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Holladay • Kearns continued its transformation on the football field. The program recorded one of the most successful seasons in many, many years in 2015, but the Cougars have shown it wasn't a one-year wonder.

In the 1990s, the headline of Kearns beating Skyline was fictional. On Friday the Cougars knocked off the Eagles, 33-30, on the road in a wild back-and-forth game in which Journey Buba snagged three interceptions, including two on Skyline's final two drives to preserve the win.

But really, it shouldn't have been that close, and Kearns coach Matt Rickards knows it. However, at this stage in the year, any win is critical, as he stated in his post-game speech to his team: It's a race to see which team improves the most from this point forward.

"Overall, pretty exciting," Rickards said. "For some reason, we like these close games this year."

The win strengthens the grip on the No. 2 seed from Region 6 for Kearns (6-2, 3-1), while Skyline (4-4, 2-2) is fighting with Hillcrest for the final two spots. The Huskies own the tiebreaker between the two.

Samuel Fetzer made a house call on the opening kickoff to give Kearns a lead before Kaden Leonard added a 41-yard field goal for a quick 10-0 advantage.

Those two players accounted for all of the Cougars' 23 first-half points. Fetzer broke free for a 46-yard touchdown after Skyline's fourth-down attempt fell incomplete, and Leonard split the uprights twice more, from 29 yards and again from 41 with less than a minute remaining until intermission.

Skyline pulled to within 10-7 when quarterback Tommy McGrath located Ben Knight on a post route before he went untouched for a 49-yard score. The Eagles again sliced their deficit to 3 — 17-14 — on the second McGrath-Knight touchdown connection, this time from 15 yards.

Kearns opened up a 30-14 lead after Sese Felila punctuated the opening drive of the second half with a 5-yard touchdown run. It appeared to be a commanding advantage, but the Cougars began to stutter offensively.

"They did a good job on defense," Rickards said. "Our offense, we stopped ourselves. Penalties, once again, we've got to play smarter and more disciplined."

Buba said it was an emotional game because of jeers from the opposing crowd, which led to the mental mistakes. "We had a bunch of arguments, penalties flying everywhere. We fought ourselves back. … The crowd members, speaking out of their mind, but we couldn't control that."

Skyline immediately responded after the Felila touchdown with a scoring drive of its own, capped by a short run by McGrath, but a fumbled exchange on the ensuing two-point conversion preserved Kearns' double-digit advantage at 30-20.

Midway through the third, the Eagles held on fourth down and promptly pulled to within one score, 30-23, on a 22-yard field goal by Nick Scott with 3:40 in the third. Skyline squandered an opportunity to pull even after another fourth-down stop, overthrowing a receiver on fourth-and-8 from the Kearns 41.

The Cougars, who operated with excellent field possession the entire evening, capitalized on Skyline's decision not to punt by scoring on the next march that culminated with Leonard's fourth field goal from 29 yards out to make it 33-23 with 9:08 remaining.

Skyline then marched 92 yards with 3:04 remaining after Kearns' 45-yard field-goal attempt, which was set up by Buba's first interception, was blocked. McGrath's third touchdown pass, a 20-yard strike to Garrett Parcell, brought the Eagles to within 33-30.

Then it got a little nuts.

Skyline recovered the ensuing onside kick, but Buba grabbed his second interception shortly thereafter. Then, with Kearns trying to run out the clock, the Eagles forced and recovered a fumble.

But Buba jumped a pass over the middle with less than a minute remaining to seal the victory.

"We've struggled in pass defense quite a bit," Rickards said. "Obviously we stepped up there toward the end. That was huge for us. Huge improvement. It was something we definitely needed."

Twitter: @trevorphibbs —

Storylines

R Kearns holds on to beat Skyline after squandering a 30-14 lead.

• Journey Buba snags three interceptions for the Cougars.

• Kearns' Kaden Leonard hits 4 of 5 field goals.