LEBANON — Lebanon got back on the winning track Friday night with a dominating 28-8 win over the North Montgomery Chargers. The Tigers (1-3, 1-1 SAC) forced six Charger (1-1, 0-1 SAC) turnovers and that led to good field position which the Tigers were able to take advantage of all night long.
“We talked a lot about playing complimentary football and that’s what we were able to do tonight,” Lebanon coach Jeff Smock said. “In our first three games we hadn’t quite done so far but our kids fought hard and our defensive line played incredible all night long. Drew Terrill, Max Williams, Kobe Ottinger were all awesome and they were a big reason for the win.”
Junior Quarterback Landon Fouts and Senior Wide Receiver Hunter Crew had a connection all night that the Chargers had no answer for. Crew hauled in 7 passes for 96 yards.
“They’ve had a great connection all summer long and we had to rely on Hunter tonight since we were depleted in our receiving corps. When we get our passing game going with our strong running game that’s when we feel like our offense could really break out.”
North Montgomery struggled offensively gaining only six total rushing yards for the game and 157 total. Playing their first game in three weeks, Charger coach Josh Thompson saw some good and some bad from their first game back.
“I thought our defense started the game pretty well,” he said. “It’s hard to overcome four turnovers in one half of football especially when all four of them gave them the ball on our side of the field. It started to wear our kids down eventually and it showed. We can’t let things start to wear us down because sometimes we’ll need our defense to win us games. I think we just have to learn how to respond a bit better to certain situations like we faced tonight.”
The Chargers lone touchdown came late in the fourth quarter when Lucas Lightly hauled in a 25 yd touchdown pass from Drew Norman who split time with starting quarterback Donavan Haworth.
“I don’t think we were quite ready to play a full game yet and that’s on me. Our offense struggled and there’s some things we need to fix. We struggled to maintain our blocks everywhere from the backs to the receivers. We’ll just go back and look at film this week and see how we can fix it.”
The job doesn’t get much easier for North Montgomery as they will welcome the 3-time state champion Western Boone Stars.
“We better make sure we’re ready to go to make sure that we’re creating some running lanes for our backs and in order to do that we’re going to have to maintain our blocks.”
Lebanon meanwhile will travel to Frankfort next Friday for another Sagamore Conference showdown.
