Football Preview: Columbus East Olympians vs. Bedford North Lawrence Stars
Columbus East is 8-2 against Bedford North Lawrence since October of 2016, and they'll have a chance to extend that success on Friday. The Columbus East Olympians will square off against the Bedford North Lawrence Stars at 7:00 p.m. Columbus East is strutting in with some offensive muscle as they've averaged 32.4 points per game this season.
Last Friday, Columbus East humbled Jeffersonville with a 52-6 victory. With the Olympians ahead 45-0 at the half, the contest was all but over already.
Columbus East can attribute much of their success to Kyson Villarreal, who threw for 137 yards and three touchdowns while completing 71.4% of his passes, and Thomas Houpey, who rushed for 122 yards and a touchdown on only 13 carries. Columbus East also got help from Keaton Lawson, who showed off his sure hands for 87 receiving yards.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the score, Columbus East was unstoppable on the ground and finished the game with 223 rushing yards. That strong performance was nothing new for the team: they've now rushed for at least 163 rushing yards in five consecutive matches.
Columbus East wouldn't let Jeffersonville keep a hold of the ball as they managed to force two fumbles. Columbus East can thank Eric Duncan and Aj Tindell for forcing both of them.
Meanwhile, a win for Bedford North Lawrence just wasn't in the cards on Friday as the team wasn't able to take the lead at any point. They took a blow against Madison, falling 47-18. The matchup was a 12-12 toss-up at halftime, but the Stars couldn't quite close it out.
Columbus East is on a roll lately: they've won five of their last six games, which provided a nice bump to their 5-3 record this season. As for Bedford North Lawrence, this is the second loss in a row for them and nudges their season record down to 1-7.
Columbus East came up short against Bedford North Lawrence in their previous meeting back in October of 2023, falling 28-21. A big factor in that loss was the dominant performance of Bedford North Lawrence's Cal Gates, who rushed for 191 yards and two touchdowns while picking up 8.0 yards per carry, and also picked up 40 receiving yards. Now that Columbus East knows the damage he can cause, will they be able to stop him this time? There's only one way to find out.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
