At least Vicksburg found the end zone — with 11 seconds to spare. That was the highlight in an otherwise dreadful 42-7 loss to Tylertown Friday night at Memorial Stadium.

The Chiefs, ranked No. 1 in Class 3A, ran for 272 yards and got three touchdowns from Didrquez Smith to roll to a comfortable win. Vicksburg (0-3), meanwhile, had five more turnovers to give the Gators 17 on the season, four more than the 13 points combined they have scored in three blowout losses.

Gators coach Alonzo Stevens says his team has to find a way to stop the self-inflicted wounds.

“If we could stop these mistakes, we might could do something. We had five more turnovers and what’s bad is four of them weren’t even forced. At least if they were forced, I could live with that,” Stevens said.

The veteran coach then let out a sigh, and added, “At least we scored.”

The touchdown came after the Chiefs (4-0) saw their second teamers add a sixth touchdown to go up 42-0 with 4:27 remaining.

The Gators, behind sophomore quarterback Cameron Cooksey, came up with their only offensive spark of the game. Cooksey hit receiver Jarvis Walker for four straight completions. The third went for 43 yards and gave the Gators a first-and-goal. Two plays later, after a dropped snap and a 5-yard motion penalty, Cooksey found Walker in the deep left corner for a 15-yard TD pass. Travis Haas added the kick to cap the scoring at 42-7.

As for the first 3 1/2 quarters, it was all Chiefs.

Vicksburg fumbled the opening kickoff and it took Tylertown just a minute to score on Ken Brown’s 15-yard run.

Smith found the end zone on three runs of 5, 5 and 2 yards to extend the Chiefs lead to 28-0 by halftime. Standout Tylertown quarterback Jamron Lewis, who came in with nearly 600 yards in total offense through three games, was pulled after one series in the second half.

Tylertown coach Walter Denton, however, was not pleased with his team’s effort

“We have 23 seniors but I’m not happy with the way we played tonight. We didn’t play well at McComb, but won. We played well at Ocean Springs and pulled that game out (a 22-21 win over a 6A power), and then last week we should’ve lost to Lawrence County but found a way to win it.

“With Vicksburg being so young, we just ran our base offense. We needed to work on some things and one of those was to run the football,” Denton said.

Smith led a six-back attack with 80 yards and three scores. Peyton Denton had 47 yards, including a 13-yard TD run in the fourth quarter.

For Vicksburg, Cooksey led the way going 6-of-9 passing for 107 yards and a TD. Walker caught five passes for 71 yards and Alventray Tarleton had one catch for 36 yards. Tylertown held the VHS ground game to 36 net yards.

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Contact Jeff Byrd at jbyrd@vicksburgpost.com