MONTICELLO — Things got out of control fast for the North Pike Jaguars Friday night as they lost to Lawrence County 42-14 on the road.
The Jaguars’ (4-2, 0-1) second loss of the season comes after taking a bye the previous week. That’s what North Pike head coach Chris Smith feared would affect his team in a negative way.
“I was afraid that we might come out like that, and play lackluster. We were playing real well before we went on break and I was concerned with that,” he said. “A lot of it goes to Lawrence County, because they have a really good football team. A lot of our mistakes were caused by them being as good as they were We made a lot more mental mistakes tonight than we have the past three to four weeks. Hats off to them; they played their tails off tonight. You’ve got to make plays, and tonight they made them and we didn’t.”
The Cougars went into halftime ahead 35-0, after running back Quitten Brown scored the first three opening touchdowns of the game, followed by two Carltez Nunnery touchdown passes to T-Tez Cole and Marcus Atterberry.
The Cougars continued to run the ball as much as possible in the second half to run the clock down with such a huge lead.
Nunnery ran in the Cougars’ final touchdown from the goal line with 11:37 left to play in the fourth quarter.
North Pike wasn’t able to post points on the board until running back Nakia Trotter ran in a touchdown with 8:19 left in the game, cutting Lawrence County’s lead to 42-7.
Backup quarterback Taz Fountain came into the game late for the Jaguars, and was able to hook up with Javian Jackson for a short passing touchdown to make it 42-14 with 0:32 left to play.
After receiving the ensuing kickoff, Lawrence County knelt the ball and claimed its victory.
Quarterback Juwan Adams finished 19-40 for 162 yards and had nine carries for nine yards. Trotter had 19 carries for 115 yards and one touchdown. Jackson had 12 catches for 102 yards and one touchdown. Tyric Miller led the team with eight tackles, followed by Douglas Forrest with seven.
North Pike returns home to take on Florence at 7 p.m. Friday. Florence won its district opener at home against Richland 69-7.
