MT. JULIET — The highly anticipated Region 6-4A showdown between Mt. Juliet and Rossview never lived up to the hype.

Mt. Juliet made sure of that.

Behind an offense that finished with 566 total yards, Mt. Juliet jumped out to a 28-point halftime lead on Friday and was never challenged in a 52-20 win over the Hawks.

Mt. Juliet tailback Brady Earnhardt ran for 189 yards and a touchdown and returned a fumble 56 yards for a touchdown, allowing the Golden Bears to move to 3-3 overall and 3-0 in Region 6-4A.

"I am proud of our guys. We're 3-0 in the region right now and for a young football team, an inexperienced football team, I'm extremely proud of them," Mt. Juliet Coach Roger Perry said.

Rossview, with its best start in school history, fell to 4-2 and 2-1 in the region.

The Hawks were their own worst enemy, losing five fumbles to go along with an interception. Rossview also had 10 penalties.

"The turnovers killed us," Rossview Coach Brian Bell said. "We didn't play well at all and made way too many mistakes."

The Golden Bears struck quickly and often in the first half, using less than three minutes to score on each of their four offensive scoring drives.

The Bears made it look easy, using only eight plays and less than three minutes to take the game's opening drive 77 yards with Vaughn Cornelia catching a 16-yard pass from Danny Valencic.

"It's unusual for us to take the football (on the opening kickoff), but we decided tonight we needed some momentum, especially after last week where we spotted a team three or four touchdowns to start a game," Perry said. "Our kids came out, put together a great drive and put points on the board."

Less than two minutes later, Earnhardt picked up a Rossview fumble and went 56 yards for a touchdown.

By the time Mikee Brown scored on a 6-yard run with 9:15 left before halftime, Mt. Juliet was ahead 20-0.

Rossview had a couple of first-half highlights with Thomas Burks throwing a 47-yard touchdown pass to Michael Simmons, and Shawn Kelly returning a kickoff 99 yards for a touchdown, but the Hawks found themselves too far down at the half.

Reed Gurchiek and Valencic each threw a touchdown in the final 69 seconds of the half. Valencic's touchdown pass to Cornelia came after Rossview fumbled a kickoff.

"Some of those (turnovers) came at key times for us, because they had some good drives and some of those turnovers were in the red zone," Perry said.

"We capitalized on those turnovers and made some big plays. It was a great night for us."