SPENCER — North Rowan showed it has the defense to go with its explosive offense while downing arch-rival Salisbury 34-7 in high school football here on a rainy Friday night.

Coach Roger Secreast’s Cavaliers limited turnover-plagued Salisbury to five first downs and 29 yards on the ground in the 2A Central Carolina Conference opener for both teams.

North improved to 2-3 overall, while coach Raymond Daugherty’s Hornets dropped to 2-4.

“The defense is getting better,” said Secreast. “They’re learning. They’re a pretty young group.”

North had given up 96 points in its last three games against a strong trio of West Rowan, Scotland County and Kannapolis A.L. Brown.

“That’s what those non-conference games were for; it got us better,” said star linebacker Marcus Lawing. “Scotland County and all those games, it didn’t do nothing but help us. We’ve got a good defense. The rain helped us a little bit with all the fumbles and stuff. We got the ball and gave our offense a better chance of scoring because they were closer to the goal.”

Leonard Atkins, Aundray Russell, Ray Johnson Jr. and Lamar Geter all intercepted passes for the Cavaliers, while Aaron Young recovered two fumbles and Harold Miller had one recovery as Salisbury turned the ball over seven times.

Chris Phillips’ blocked punt and one of Young’s fumble recoveries set up two North touchdowns. Atkins’ interception and 15-yard return paved the way for a 65-yard North TD drive.

Salisbury, which had negative rushing yardage until late in the third quarter, had 114 total yards.

“The key to the football game was the blocked punt,” said Daugherty. “They had gotten close to punts all night. We told our young men about it, yet we had a letdown. That was a big, big error — a good job on North’s part, a bad job on our part.”

Salisbury trailed only 14-7 in the opening minutes of the second half when Phillips, a quick wide receiver, raced through to block Gromyko Walker’s punt. North’s James House fell on the ball at the Salisbury 1, setting up a 1-yard TD run by the 205-pound Lawing.

“We have been working on our heavy set, and we were able to use it tonight,” explained Secreast, who had 265-pound defensive lineman Marcus Hayes with Lawing in the two-back set. “We call it a monster. We have one of the biggest people we have and one of our biggest running backs. We can do some things off of it. We ran a reverse off of it, and we threw a touchdown pass off of it. But, primarily, it’s just line up, hit you in the face and hopefully generate a little momentum. It’s just a power game.”

The hard-running Lawing ran 9 yards for his first career rushing touchdown in the opening quarter and finished with 60 yards in 14 carries.

“Coach just decided to put a running game in, and we did. We went to a power set. It felt good,” said Lawing. “It reminded me of my old Little League days when I used to run the ball. I played with the Girls and Boys Club in Concord. Me and Ken Drye played on the same team with each other.”

Drye, Salisbury’s star linebacker-running back, lived in Mount Pleasant then, while Lawing grew up in Concord. Lawing moved here in the seventh grade.

“I was counting on my line, because the offensive line was blocking real good tonight,” said Lawing. “I just followed big Marcus Hayes and my other linemen. They opened the holes up.”

The offensive linemen also had their usual job of blocking for quarterback Graham Hosch in North’s normal spread offense with five wide receivers. Hosch completed 11 of 26 for 162 yards, less than his average of 295 coming into the contest.

“We were having a little bit of trouble tonight with the ball taking off on us,” said Secreast of the passing stats. “That’s the first time Graham’s ever played in the rain trying to throw the football. He’s got to learn to do that, and he will. He still threw the ball pretty well. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t exactly what we wanted.”

Hosch threw for two touchdowns, hitting Dre Byrd on a 22-yard play and Alfonzo Miller from 18 yards out. The senior and first-year starter has now passed for 1,342 yards and 11 touchdowns.

Salisbury trailed 14-0 after Hosch’s 1-yard TD run and Kevin Rutherford’s conversion with 4:51 left in the half, but the Hornets quickly charged back to make it a close game until the third quarter.

A 52-yard kickoff return by Drye to the North 29 set up the touchdown. The Hornets were penalized before Dewayne Coward threw a 33-yard touchdown pass to a wide-open Walker, who made the catch at the North 10 and ran into the end zone.

“He was wide open,” said Daugherty of his team’s only TD. “But we had receivers wide open several other times and didn’t hit them. It was just something we put in out of the trip set, and it worked. Some things work and some don’t.”

Both coaches pointed out that it was an emotional contest because many of the North and Salisbury athletes are either friends, former teammates or relatives.

“Anytime you play Salisbury, it’s going to be an emotional contest. Anything can happen in an emotional contest,” said Secreast, who was Salisbury’s head coach from 1983 through 1985.

He wasn’t happy with his team being penalized several times for unsportsmanlike conduct.

“That came with that emotion,” he explained. “We didn’t respond well. That’s something we have to work on.”

Daugherty said, “I’m disappointed with our kids. I’m disappointed for them. We’ve got a lot of kids that have a lot of ties with North Rowan. I really feel for them, because they’re hurting now. This is the last opportunity our kids are going to have to play North rowan — a lot of the seniors. I feel for them, but we did not get the job done. I congratulate North Rowan.”

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NOTES: The Cavaliers have defeated Salisbury five straight times with the closest game during that stretch being North’s 30-12 win at Salisbury last year. ... The Hornets’ last victory over North came by a score of 28-6 in 1995. ... Lawing was the game’s leading rusher with his 60 yards, while Graham Hosch ran for 37. ... Two of Hosch’s passes were intercepted by cousin Willie Hosch of the Hornets, who had runbacks of 43 and 23 yards. ... Phillips not only blocked the punt but caught four passes for 41 yards and had four rushes for 24 yards. ... North’s Russell had a brilliant 91-yard runback of a pass interception reduced to 37 yards by a clipping penalty.