North Johnston has enjoyed the comforts of home their last three games, but now they'll head out on the road. They will head out to take on the Lakewood Leopards at 7:00 p.m. on Friday. Both come into the matchup bolstered by wins in their previous matches.
North Johnston is headed in fresh off scoring the most points they have all season. They blew past Hobbton 56-34 on Friday. The Panthers pushed the score to 50-27 by the end of the third, a deficit the Wildcats cut but never quite recovered from.
Kaleb Pone was his usual excellent self, throwing for 286 yards and five touchdowns while picking up 11.4 yards per attempt, and also rushing for 185 yards and a touchdown while picking up 9.7 yards per carry. With that strong performance, he is now averaging an impressive 110.8 rushing yards per game.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the score, North Johnston was unstoppable on the ground and finished the game with 281 rushing yards. That's the most rushing yards they've posted since back in September of 2023.
Meanwhile, Lakewood was not the first on the board last Friday, but they got there more often. They won a match that couldn't have been any closer, slipping by Red Springs 27-26. The 27-point effort marked the Leopards' lowest-scoring contest of the season, but in the end it didn't matter.
The win got North Johnston back to even at 2-2. As for Lakewood, their victory was their third straight on the road, which pushed their record up to 4-1.
North Johnston might still be hurting after the 28-8 loss they got from Lakewood when the teams last played back in September of 2023. A big factor in that loss was the dominant performance of Lakewood's Calvin Lacewell, who rushed for 150 yards and two touchdowns on only 14 carries. Now that North Johnston knows the damage he can cause, will they be able to stop him this time? Check MaxPreps.com after the match to find out.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
