The Easton Red Rovers entered their game against the Emmaus Green Hornets undefeated and averaging 36 points per game.

After it, neither of those statistics remained in tact.

Last Friday night at East Penn School District Stadium, Emmaus (3-2, 3-1) defeated Easton (4-1, 3-1) by a score of 14-7 in a very physical game in front of the largest crowd at EPSD Stadium this season.

Head coach Randy Cuthbert was pleased his team held the Red Rover offense to seven points.

"That was huge," he said. "That was the game. We thought if we could contain their running game and get them passing that we would have a shot. They hit us on a double-move, but other than that I thought our defense played great."

The Green Hornet defense allowed Easton's Brad Wilkens to throw for over 100 yards, but it only gave up that one score, a 38-yard pass from Wilkens to Joey Ford with 18 seconds left in the first half.

The Red Rovers' top rusher was Nolan Kilpatrick with 57 yards on 12 carries. He and Kyle Bambary took the carries after the team's leading rusher, Shane Simpson, exited the game after the first series with an ankle injury and was on the sidelines with crutches the rest of the game.

Emmaus took advantage of Easton's inability to move the ball in the absence of one of the area's top rushers. Kyzir White capitalized the most as he picked off two Easton passes, increasing his season total to five.

"I know that defense wins championships," White said. "I try to get a turnover or get a pick. I know what I am capable of on defense. They tried to test me today and I don't think that is really smart. The receiver was my toughest test this season, but I kept fighting."

Offensively, White caught just one pass for six yards as the game was the break-out party for Andrew Davidson. The junior tight end lined up in the backfield most of the night and grinded out 51 yards on 15 carries that included a 2-yard touchdown to cap a seven-play drive. The drive was highlighted by a 28-yard pass from Logan Kober to Noah Bertram, who caught two passes for 31 yards in the game.

"It was gratifying to see that we could stack up against them," Cuthbert said about the battle in the trenches. "We knew we were going to have a big problem with the defensive front as their lineman and linebackers are great. We made enough plays.

"When we had problems, we went to our Rhino Package, which is our heavy package, with Davidson carrying the ball and really played old-school football."

The first score for the Hornets came on their second drive of the game. It took only six plays and lasted 2:58 and ended with Wyl Miller running it in from Easton's 20-yard line. A Hunter Kushy extra point (he was 2-2 in the game) made it 7-0 Emmaus about midway through the first They extended that lead with the Davidson score a little later.

Easton mounted a long drive late in the fourth quarter that started at their 19-yard line and lasted 10 plays.

The drive stalled on Emmaus's 29-yard line as the Red Rovers turned it over on downs and turned over the game to the Green Hornets.

This win not only rocked the large crowd on mentor night at EPSD Stadium, it also rocked the Lehigh Valley Conference as the Hornets handed the Red Rovers their first loss of the season and shook up the LVC standings.

With the help of rival Parkland, which defeated Whitehall, this victory set up a five-way tie at the top of the league between all four of the aforementioned schools and Bethlehem Catholic who beat Liberty this past Saturday.

For a team that started out 0-2 and was counted out by many in the Lehigh Valley, the Hornets have stormed back to relevancy, which should make for a great second half of the season for the current LVC co-leader.