By Randy Whitehouse,Staff Writer

GRAY – The wins and losses are in black and white in the standings, but there’s a lot of gray area on the gridiron where who wins and who loses is being decided.

Thus Lake Region coach Chuck Hamaty was happy that his team knocked off upstart Gray-New Gloucester 42-26 at Burbank Field on Friday night, but wasn’t too pleased that the Patriots had more than tripled their season’s point total against his defense. And Patriots coach Hank Girardin wasn’t satisfied with a homecoming loss, but could point to the fact that his team, outscored 133-8 in its first three games, had finally been competitive with a Campbell Conference foe.

Senior Brandon Allen rushed for 159 yards and four touchdowns on just 10 carries and the Lakers piled up 347 yards on the ground to improve to 2-2.

“We stumbled a little bit. We got a little lax at times,” Hamaty said. “I’m happy with the win. My guys played well at times. We’re not a good defensive team yet. That’s obvious.”

The Lakers surrendered 243 total yards to the Patriots, including 136 and a rushing touchdown on 22 carries by junior tailback Josh Shobert. Big freshman fullback Nick Audet added 42 yards and two TDs.

“We competed tonight,” Girardin said. “That’s what we wanted to do.”

One place where the Patriots’ inexperience showed was reading the Laker traps and counters. One play in particular, the tackle trap, gave them the most trouble, springing Allen for several long runs.

“Usually I’ll just go right up the middle, but sometimes our tackle will come out and take that corner and I’ll bounce it outside,” said Allen, who has been battling plantar fasciitis in his left foot since preseason.

“Brandon has really had a good year, so far,” Hamaty said. “That comes from a lot of offseason work. I hope some of our younger kids look at what he’s done and see what he’s accomplished. He’s gone 100 percent and he won’t be 100 percent the whole year. He’s got an injury that slows him down, and he still does a nice job for us.”

Patrick Daley had the Lakers’ first big touchdown run, a 41-yarder, to put them on the board on the game’s opening drive. Allen closed out the first quarter with a 51-yarder to make it 14-0, but the Patriots got right back in the game with a solid 69-yard drive capped by the 210-pound Audet’s first TD run.

The Lakers pulled away by scoring twice in the final 2:39 of the first half on Allen’s 10- and 36-yard TD jaunts. G-NG started the second half with a 78-yard drive, helped by a roughing the punter penalty by the Lakers, that ended with a 2-yard score by Audet.

G-NG (0-4) showed more discipline than Lake Region. The Lakers were flagged for 10 penalties for 86 yards, while the Patriots collected just three penalties for 15 yards.

“We did some things OK. We started to execute our offense a little bit, and we’ve got a lot of young kids that are starting to show some experience, starting to show that they can make adjustments,” Girardin said. “The difference tonight was (Lake Region) was more experienced than us. They weren’t physically better than us. They weren’t more prepared. They just outplayed us on a man-to-man basis.”

Matt Brookes added an 11-yard touchdown and Shobert had a 24-yard TD run for the Patriots, while Kyle Ebling scored on a 37-yard run for the Lakers.