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BRANDON — Cathedral High School senior quarterback Noah Russ threw six touchdown passes as the Green Wave bounced back in a big way with a 45-24 win over Pisgah High School in the Dragons’ homecoming game.

MAIS Class 5A Cathedral needed to get back on track after a blowout loss to MAIS Class 6A Parklane Academy a week ago. But not even the Green Wave could have expected this kind of performance against MHSAA Class 2A Pisgah High.

“We started out on fire. Defensively, we made a couple of stops. Offensively, it took until the second drive to get going. But then we found some match-ups we liked and took advantage of their secondary,” Green Wave head coach Chuck Darbonne said.

Darbonne noted that because Pisgah put Cathedral in a tough situation to run the ball, the Green Wave decided to put the ball in Russ’s hands and let him air it out. And Russ could have had even more touchdown passes than he ended up with.

He added that Russ had without a doubt the best game of the year. He said that the receivers did a good job getting open and that the offensive line had a good game and gave Russ a lot of protection so that he could have time to throw the ball.

“Even with the six touchdown passes, he had a good game. But we had four or five drops. Had one called back on an offensive pass interference that wasn’t there,” Darbonne said.

Despite the lopsided win, Darbonne said that the Green Wave lost a little focus at times in the second and third quarters that allowed the Dragons to get back in the game. However, every time Pisgah would score, Cathedral would respond with a touchdown or two of its own.

Russ threw touchdown passes of 22, 44 and 15 yards to Jordan Henry, 26 and 48 yards to Kaden Batieste, and a 23-yarder to Justin Hawkins late in the second quarter to give the Green Wave a 31-12 halftime lead.

“We had a good feeling coming out of halftime that we had a pretty good game plan,” Darbonne said.

Dragons senior quarterback Braxton Brown provided much of their offense and scoring with one touchdown pass and two touchdown runs.

“They put together a few good drives,” Darbonne noted.

Cathedral (2-3) plays host to archrival St. Aloysius High School (0-4) at D’Evereaux Stadium next Friday at 7 p.m.