Football Preview: Natchitoches Central Chiefs vs. Huntington Raiders
After two games on the road, Natchitoches Central is heading back home. They will welcome the Huntington Raiders at 7:00 p.m. on Friday. Both teams took a loss in their last game, so they'll have plenty of motivation to get the 'W'.
Natchitoches Central is headed in fresh off scoring the most points they have all season. They came up short against Airline on Friday, falling 76-52. While losing is never fun, the Chiefs can't take it too hard given the team's big disadvantage in MaxPreps' Louisiana football rankings (they are ranked 150th, while the Vikings are ranked 15th).
The match pitted two dominant signal callers against one another in Owen Smith and Ben Taylor. Taylor had a great game and threw for 460 yards and six touchdowns while completing 82.4% of his passes. Meanwhile, Smith was balling out in the loss, throwing for 401 yards and five touchdowns, while also rushing for 147 yards and a touchdown on only 14 carries.
Meanwhile, Huntington was not able to break out of their rough patch on Friday as the team picked up their third straight loss. They fell 21-14 to Calvary Baptist Academy. The game was a 14-14 toss-up at halftime, but the Raiders couldn't quite close it out.
Despite the defeat, Huntington got top-tier performance from Nyles Hullaby, who rushed for 164 yards and two touchdowns. The dominant performance gave Hullaby a new career-high in rushing yards.
Even though they lost, Huntington was unstoppable on the ground and finished the game with 226 rushing yards. That strong performance was nothing new for the team: they've now rushed for at least 152 rushing yards in seven consecutive matches.
Natchitoches Central dropped their record down to 1-8 with the loss, which was their fourth straight on the road. As for Huntington, their defeat dropped their record down to 4-4.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
