WEBSTER – Whether directly or indirectly, the Aberdeen Roncalli defense helped the offensive output in a 42-0 victory over Webster Friday night.

The fifth-rated Cavaliers forced four turnovers, one of which was returned for a touchdown, and allowed the offense to play on a short field to help key the Northeast Conference football victory.

Roncalli’s final yardage total does not look indicative of a team that produced 42 points, but that’s just fine with Cavaliers coach Billy Young.

“I don’t care about numbers. I don’t care about stats. All I care about is winning the football game,” Young said. “Our guys played hard and are doing everything that they’re supposed to do. Everything just kind of fell into place tonight.”

Roncalli finished with less than 300 yards from scrimmage, in large part because the Cavaliers’ offense was put in prime position by the team’s defense.

“It really makes it easy on the offense when our defense can force turnovers and give us a short field to work with,” Young said. “Our defense has just really played outstanding this year.”

The Cavaliers got the offense going early when Maddox May score the game’s first touchdown. From there, the passing game took over as Jackson Isakson fired a pair of touchdown passes to Austin Meyers and another to Keegan Stewart to give Roncalli a 27-0 halftime lead.

Zane Backous intercepted a pass and returned it for a touchdown in the second half and Kaden Larson added a rushing touchdown.

Not only did the Roncalli defense help the offense, it thwarted the Webster offense, namely the dangerous Bearcats running backs.

“That was my biggest concern going in. They have two running backs who are very fast, probably as fast as anybody that we’ve got on our team, and if we let them get into the secondary they can cause some problems,” Young said. “So our goal was to try to keep them bottled up and not let them beat us with their trap play, and try not to let them get to the edge on us and we were able to do that.”

May led the Cavaliers with 72 yards rushing. Isakson added 52 yards rushing and threw for 69 more yards.

Roncalli, 7-0 on the season, wraps up the regular season by hosting Clark-Willow Lake at 7 p.m. Thursday at Dacotah Bank Stadium.

The two teams had a tight battle last year, won by the Cyclones.

“I really think it starts with the quarterback,” Young said of the key against C-WL. “He’s one of the better athletes in the conference. He hurt us with his arm and with his legs. We have to make sure that we contain him.”

While the Cavaliers have their eyes on seed points to determine playoff positioning, they just want to make sure they have everybody ready go to for the road ahead.

“I think it’s going to be important going into next week and as we go into the playoffs, just try to keep everybody healthy,” Young said. “If we can do that, the power points and all that will sort itself out. We don’t have any control over that.”