Olathe ? It’s rare that a football team walks off the field with players and coaches holding their heads high after a four-score loss.

Yet Lawrence High sported that look Friday night at Olathe District Activity Center because the Lions proved to themselves they could compete with the best, despite a 27-0 loss to No. 2 Olathe North.

The Eagles (8-0) had too much depth and talent for Lawrence to hold them back, and a pair of LHS breakdowns in the first half proved quite costly. Still, the defense the Lions (4-4) displayed brought about hope and promise following a district loss.

Lawrence mostly bottled up O-North star running back Venus Triplett (19 rushes, 42 yards and a touchdown) when he carried the ball. And the Eagles only rushed for 67 yards as a team, thanks to the pressure applied by Lawrence’s defensive front, which played a role in some of O-North’s miscues (four fumbles, one lost).

“Defensively, we played so hard,” Lions coach Dirk Wedd said, “and we couldn’t do anything offensively. It’s hard to keep the defense on the field so long.”

Indeed, O-North defenders engulfed LHS junior running back J.D. Woods almost every time he touched the ball. The typically explosive, big-play threat only took one of his 19 carries for double-digit yardage (12), and he finished with an uncharacteristic 54 yards (2.8 per touch).

“It’s probably one of the best defenses we’ll play all year,” Woods said. “Sometimes they were stacking, like, eight in the box, so they were manning up our receivers, and we couldn’t really do anything against that. They just took away the run that we usually have every week.”

Neither sophomore running back Trey Moore (11 runs, 25 yards) nor junior quarterback Alan Clothier (15 carries, 44 yards) could get rolling, either.

LHS didn’t complete a pass all night and gained every one of its 123 yards of offense on the ground.

Even the Lions’ most impressive series of the game didn’t erase the zero on the scoreboard. Lawrence opened the third quarter with the ball. A 30-yard Moore run, a seven-yard Clothier conversion on fourth-and-five, an O-North pass-interference call and a 10-yard Clothier gain on third-and-three keyed a 17-play drive that went 77 yards and devoured 8:17 of game clock.

Then O-North’s superior talent showed up in the form of a Jeighlon Cornell blocked field goal from 20 yards out, kicked by LHS senior Ellis Springe.

What seemed like such success after a 14-0, first-half hole, suddenly shifted to the realm of what-ifs.

Said Lawrence junior lineman Amani Bledsoe: “It’s pretty disappointing because when it gets blocked you feel like you wish we would’ve gone for it instead. Things happen.”

Added Wedd: “When you work that hard like we were and came out in the second half with a little fire and then get no points, it’s just devastating.”

Two of the worst transgressions for Lawrence came in the first half. Triplett took off for a 64-yard punt-return touchdown in the first quarter. And after back-to-back series of victories for the Lions’ defense, O-North added a second-quarter touchdown by picking up a first down on third-and-25. Senior quarterback Cole Murphy found senior Chaz Burgess to keep the drive going, and three Triplett rushes later he was in the end zone.

Wedd said the handful of mistakes LHS made proved to be the difference against one of the top teams in Class 6A.

“I love the effort,” the coach said. “We’re real close to being a really good team. We’ve just got to get over the hump.”

After Lawrence failed to score with its long drive to open the third, the Eagles essentially put the game on ice with a back-breaking 34-yard TD throw from Murphy to Mark Keeling on fourth-and-three in the final minute of the third.

“I felt like we held our own for a while,” Bledsoe said. “They just broke off some nice plays, long runs, converted on fourth down.”

From this point on, Wedd told his Lions, they are in playoff mode, with just one regular-season game remaining — Friday at LHS, against Olathe East.

“I think we learned a lot tonight, and I think we’ll come back,” Wedd said. “I know we’ll come back ready to practice on Monday, and I know we’ll be ready to play on Friday.”