Lakeland and King’s Fork were locked in a defensive battle for the much of the game, but the Cavaliers offense asserted itself in the fourth quarter, and they ran away with a 35-7 road victory on Friday night.

“First half they confused us a little bit about what they were doing defensive-wise,” Cavaliers head coach Glenwood Ferebee said.

The Bulldogs also found difficulty in the first half, remaining scoreless until the third quarter.

“We just left our opportunities offensively in the first half,” Bulldogs head coach Joe Jones said. “We didn’t turn anything into points.”

The first score of the game came in the final seconds of the first half as Cavaliers senior wideout Antonio Jefferson returned a punt 90 yards for a touchdown.

“I’ve been wanting one all season and it opened up,” Jefferson said. “I just hit it, it was there. We practiced it all this week, something we usually don’t do. So, it worked.”

“Of course, couldn’t end the half any worse than we wanted to giving the return,” Jones said. “We’re going to work on that and get better on it.”

Tonight’s meeting marked Cavaliers senior quarterback Zach Super’s first on-field appearance at King’s Fork since he transferred from there to Lakeland as a rising junior.

“And being here, him coming from here and playing here, he had a lot of anxiety, lot of nervousness, and he wanted to do well, so he pressed the game a little bit,” Ferebee said.

Super had three interceptions in the first half, two to senior defensive back Davon Grayson and one to sophomore defensive back TyQuan Weston. Ferebee met Super’s dejection over this with encouragement.

“And I just told him, ‘We believe in you. We throw the ball enough you’re going to throw interceptions. We don’t care about that. All we care about is the next play when you go out,’” he said.

The Bulldogs began the second half on a bright note with Grayson taking a short shovel pass from junior quarterback Uriah Adams and turning it into a 55-yard touchdown.

“Second half, thought we came out good, score on the first drive, back on the game, good to go,” Jones said. “Just fourth quarter, wasn’t in the cards and wasn’t a lack of effort.”

Lakeland turned to their running game in the second half.

“We wanted to run the ball, run the ball, run the ball to get them out of their aggressive style of defense,” Ferebee said.

Raekwon Johnson ran 20 times for 146 yards and a touchdown.

Ferebee gives the credit to Super for the strong offensive play.

“(He) picked his head up and he came out and had a real good second half,” Ferebee said. “Made the protection calls the correct way and that was the key. Zach Super was actually the key. Even though he didn’t have a good game stat-wise, he had a good game managing the game.”

Super had only 20 yards of total offense, but made a six-yard touchdown pass to Jefferson.

Jefferson had two interceptions and two touchdowns in another stellar outing.

“Man, that kid is a football player,” Ferebee said. “He’s one of the best I’ve seen around here. He don’t get a lot of credit that the other guys get. I guess because he doesn’t have all these offers and things like that, but they’re coming.”

Lakeland held King’s Fork to 39 yards passing and 207 yards of total offense while they racked up 273 rushing yards alone against the Bulldogs defense.

Next Friday, Lakeland (4-2, 3-2) hosts Grassfield and King’s Fork (4-2, 3-2) heads to Hickory.