For the second time in seven days, R.B. Hudson (5-0) defeated county rival Tipton-Durant (0-3) to keep its perfect season alive.

This time the Bulldogs didn’t even have to play four quarters.

A lightning delay stopped Tuesday’s game before the start of the fourth quarter and forced the game to be called following a 45-minute delay. At the time of the stoppage, R.B. Hudson was firmly in control with a 14-0 lead.

“With your rivals, it just happens you aren’t going to play pretty games against rivals,” said R.B. Hudson head coach Eugene Foster. “The objective becomes to win sometimes, to get a win and get out of town. That happened tonight.”

Tyreshon Freeman threw a 30-yard touchdown pass to Nicholas Parnell in the first quarter to give R.B. Hudson a 6-0 lead. Following last week’s 20-8 win over Tipton, it looked as if the Bulldogs might roll.

Instead, they found themselves in a tight game throughout.

The Blue Devils added a spread offense this week, something they hadn’t used a lot of this season and it created some big plays.

“We saw where we were kind of one-dimensional,” said Tipton head coach Courvoisea Fails of last week’s game. “We were just running the ball so we went to the spread and in some cases we had a little success. We had a lot of great looks. We just didn’t capitalize on it.”

Both teams turned the ball over on interceptions late in the second quarter to end potential scoring drives and the Bulldogs took a 6-0 advantage into the locker room.

With the storm approaching, R.B. Hudson finally put the game away at the end of the third quarter. Parnell ran for a 40-yard touchdown down the right sideline to put the Bulldogs up 12-0 with 2:07 left in the third. Amarian Molette’s two-point conversion made it 14-0.

On the next possession, Tipton had run two plays and was facing a 3rd-and-2 at the its own 33 when the game was stopped at 7:25 p.m.  After each team waited for about half an hour, the coaches elected to call the game with the safety of all involved in mind.

“My kids are disappointed that we had to stop because they were looking to come out and play a better fourth quarter than last time,” Fails said.

Tipton’s next game is Oct. 20 against Ellwood Christian, while R.B. Hudson will take on Linden Oct. 5.Last year the Bulldogs were 5-0 when they went to Linden but the Patriots handed them their first loss of the year.  They’ll hope to avoid a similar fate this season.