EASTON - It was a battle between two 3-3 teams in Northern Lehigh and Notre Dame-Green Pond in Colonial League play Friday night.

Notre Dame stormed out early and rolled to a 42-7 victory over the Bulldogs.

Crusaders quarterback Danny Darno threw four touchdowns and the Notre Dame-Green Pond passing game was on point.

“Like I said to our guys, there was the ugly and some good tonight,” Northern Lehigh head coach Joe Tout said. “We did a lot of things offensively we wanted to in the first half, but didn’t score. I made a comment at halftime that we don’t keep track of the sideline time of possession. We definitely won that battle, but we didn’t get the quick stops. We weren’t able to finish that first drive. We were kind of hoping to pin them inside the 10. That didn’t happen and then they scored. They’re lightning fast.”

Northern Lehigh received the opening kickoff and held on to the ball for much of the first quarter.

Notre Dame scored first when Darno hit James Wisecarver for a 76-yard touchdown to put the Crusaders up 7-0.

An interception by the Crusaders late in the first quarter put them on the Northern Lehigh 10-yard line and two plays later, Josh Ludlow punched it in from five yards to make it 14-0.

The Bulldogs had good time management when it came to time of possession. Northern Lehigh made Darno throw the ball and the senior quarterback missed all but one of his passes in a 341-yard game.

“That was kind of the tale. We weren’t able to get that stop in the first half,” Tout said. “We felt good about the drives; we just weren’t able to capitalize. The first one we stalled out, the second one we had that holding penalty. There’s a lot of good offensively. We did some positive things. Defensively, we wanted to take away Darno with the run game and they hurt us throwing the ball. Second half, we made some adjustments with another guy in the secondary. That kind of slowed them a little bit, but at that point it was too big of a lead.”

Northern Lehigh got on the board with a four-yard touchdown run by Grady Newhard in the final minute of the fourth quarter. The Bulldogs started the season 0-2 and have gone 3-2 in their last five games.

“We’re getting better, that was our message today,” Tout said. “We didn’t put our heads down, now we just got to bounce back.”

Newhard saw a lot of the ball on the first drive of the game and Jack Tosh split most of the carries with the running back throughout the night. Northern Lehigh tried to run some different plays to throw off the Crusader defense.

“That wasn’t easy to do against a team like Northern Lehigh,” Notre Dame head coach Phil Stambaugh said. “I don’t think the score was indicative of how hard that really is to do against a team that has ball control and they throw a lot of trick plays. I’m very proud of our defense for how they played, but that wasn’t an easy win.”

DARNO-LUDLOW CONNECTION ... Notre-Dame Green Pond quarterback Danny Darno found wide receiver Josh Ludlow several times and Stambaugh talked about the connection the two have. “Danny and Josh have a relationship from when they were little kids, so it’s really special and what they’re able to do. The connection that they have comes together, it’s really special.”

LUDLOW’S NIGHT ... Notre Dame senior Josh Ludlow not only caught two touchdown passes from Darno, but also rushed for two touchdowns for a four-touchdown game. Notre Dame had lost its two previous games. “We knew this was going to be a grind through the middle of our season and having those four teams back-to-back-to-back-to-back and now getting ready for Jim Thorpe,” Stambaugh said. “It’s tough physically and mentally and we feel like we’ve been playing pretty good ball, with the exception of that first quarter against Palmerton. We need to build off of this and the way our defense played tonight. I’m really proud of those kids.”