meadville — Not only did the Franklin County High School football team beat defending Class 4A South State champion North Pike last week, the Bulldogs dominated the defending champs.

Franklin County won the game 23-8 and held North Pike to just 73 total yards. The Bulldogs racked up 187 yards rushing.

This week Franklin County is preparing to travel to Brookhaven to take on Loyd Star, a team they crushed 62-7 last season.

Franklin County head coach Rickey O’Quinn said despite last season’s success against Loyd Star, he expects his players to be focused for this year’s contest.

“We saw some film (of Loyd Star), and they play hard,” O’Quinn said. “The fell down I think maybe 28-7 at the half and battled back and had a chance to win the game (last week against Bogue Chitto). They are a relentless bunch that we have to be ready to play.

“We have to learn that we have to approach every game the same way. We can’t reflect on last year. I’m pretty sure they will be better than last year.”

O’Quinn said he was happy with the way his team played in week one.

“I thought we played extremely hard on both sides of the ball,” he said. “Defensively we played great, and offensively we ran the ball well. I was pleased with the intensity, and that we played all four quarters and played them the same way.”

O’Quinn said the ground game will be key again this week.

“They run the ball pretty well, so we have to be prepared to stop the run,” he said.

O’Quinn singled out his two inside linebackers, Jeremy Hunt and Jimmy Barnes, as being keys to stopping Loyd Star’s rushing attack.

“(Hunt and Barnes) will have to play big for us,” he said. “On offenses, we have to get early plays, and hopefully big plays, from running backs Jadarius Davis and Chris Robinson.”

The Bulldogs had special teams and penalty issues in their win over North Pike, and those are aspects of their game they are working on this week, O’Quinn said.

“We had too many penalties, like 13 penalties for 88 yards,” he said. “We have to do better than that. We also are working on special teams. We have to get better on kickoff coverage. We really want to perform well in that area.”

The only touchdown the Bulldogs gave up last week was an 81-yard kickoff return by North Pike’s Santana Wilson.

O’Quinn said getting a win Friday and improving to 2-0 would be a huge accomplishment for his team.

“(Being 2-0) would be very important, especially going into Tylertown next week,” he said. “Plus we never won two games in a row last year, and being able to do that would be a morale booster.”

Franklin County will play at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Loyd Star.