CRANBERRY TWP — Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic football coach Bob Ravenstahl has been stressing a game-by-game approach for his kids this season.

While the Trojans may have overlooked South Side Beaver last week, they won’t be overlooking their WPIAL semifinal opponent.

Top-seeded North Catholic will play Avonworth Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Mars Athletic Complex.

The fifth-seeded Antelopes have lost three games in the past two seasons, all against their Black Hills Conference rivals.

That’s why Ravenstahl thinks North Catholic, which has won 27 straight games, scoring a season-low 20 points against the Rams last week wasn’t a bad thing.

“I think that’s going to help us,” Ravenstahl said. “We’ve been doing pretty well against most of our opponents. You can’t expect to score a lot of points every game. It’s been helping us prepare, we had a great practice (Tuesday).”

Against South Side, the Trojans struggled with mistakes.

North Catholic committed 10 penalties that cost it 85 yards.

Avonworth (10-1) expects to be healthier this time compared to when it lost 28-0 in Week 7 at Stone Field in North Park.

Running back Jamal Hughley injured his ankle in the first quarter of that meeting and lineman Devon Rice and Justin Gross also went out with injuries in the first half.

Hughley, who leads Avonworth with 651 yards and 10 touchdowns, was limited to 25 yards on nine carries in the first game.

Despite the injuries, the game was scoreless at halftime.

“In that game in particular we had a few kids go down in the early stage of the game,” Avonworth coach Duke Johncour said. “When you put a game-plan together and kids go down, that’s always tough. We’re healthy now and ready to play them again.”

North Catholic will return a key player this week in senior running back/linebacker Jerome Turner. Turner was held out of last week’s game as precautionary measure with a back injury.

Turner is second on the team in rushing with 1,028 yards and has scored 22 touchdowns.

Senior running back P.J. Fulmore picked up the slack, rushing for a season-high 31 times and piled up 173 yards last week.

“It will give us a chance to rest P.J. and he plays defense for us, too,” Ravenstahl said. “We missed him on defense and that gave us a chance to rest players. Being able to rotate backs is the biggest thing.”

Avonworth hopes to snap its string of tough losses to North Catholic.

“It would be a big deal to make that happen,” Couchnour said. “Our kids would be excited and pumped about it. It’s in our grasp. The opportunity is out there for the taking.”