Landrum- 25
Dixie- 3 Lincoln County- 42 McCormick- 8 Greenwood Raptors- 40 Ware Shoals- Remember how many luftballoons Nena sang about? 99 less than that. Whitmire- 19 Great Falls- 6 Lamar- 23 Pageland- Considerably less than Lamar scored. 23 less, actually. Timmonsville- 14 Edisto- 6 Chesterfield- 47 McBee- 6 Barnwell- 40 Blackville-Hilda- 6 Denmark-Olar- 24 Bethune-Bowman- 18 Eau Claire- 14 Hunter-Kinard-Tyler- (An oldie but goodie) WHITE CANDY BAR!!!! Branchville- 49 North- Something incredibly deep and immensely spiritual Saluda- 55 Ridge Spring-Monetta- 12 Fox Creek- 19 Wagener-Salley- 12 Silver Bluff- 56 Williston-Elko- 10 Garrett Technical School for Applied Learning, Linguistics and Long-haul trucking- 12 Baptist Hill- 6 Academic Magnet- 58 Charleston Charter Academy for the Arts, Aerospace Technology and Emu husbandry- 20 Ridgeland-Hardeeville- 29 Estill- They are stylish and completely wind-resistant North Charleston- 16 Military Magnet- 14 Andrew Jackson- 37 St. John’s- 24 C.E. Murray- 26 Lee Central- 20 Whale Branch- 47 Cross- Move along, people Scott’s Branch- 27 East Clarendon- 13 Mullins- 56 Creek Bridge- Freaky ice cream Hannah-Pamplico- 28 Green Sea-Floyds- 12 Andrews- 22 Hemingway- That pizza looks AMAZING Lake View- 43 The Sausages- All the flavor with none of the carbs! Breakdown- It wasn’t a great week for our Class A brethren taking on the big boys this week, having posted a record of only 5-16 in those contests. Among those five victories was a spectacularly unsurprising 23-0 win for Lamar over Pageland Central. The Eagles managed only 99 yards of offense, they gave up six sacks (which probably means they were sacked on every pass attempt no more than they throw it) and they were 1-for-11 on third down conversions. So, in back-to-back week’s nobody has peed a drop against Lamar’s defense. My super secret imbedded Silver Fox source had told me previously that the team was a little young at LB, but very good up front. The youth on the second line hasn’t been an issue to this point, it doesn’t sound like. They have an interesting challenge this week, going to AAAA Darlington. The Falcons are 0-2 but have scored a ton of points through the first two weeks. They probably still have terrible memories of the horrific railing Lamar gave them last season. Memories and a noticeable limp…Timmonsville improved to 2-0 with a 14-6 victory over Edisto. I don’t know how good the Cougars are, but they are a AAA squad that had worked HKT 39-0 the week before. I’ll admit to having Timmonsville a bit under the radar, actually off any radar including the Doppler 17,000 that weather lady Sprinkles Hailstones uses on the channel 19 news, to start the season. The coaching change didn’t really factor in much, but they graduated one of the best, game-breaking WRs in the state and supremely awesome QB/DB Jamaric Morris transferred to Wilson. Well, he transferred back and doggone if he didn’t make the difference against Edisto with a big pick-six. They have a good shot to go 3-0 this week with a game at Lee Central…Speaking of the ponies, or wild mustangs or whatever they call themselves, they lost to the current number two team in Class A in C.E. Murray 26-20 in overtime. The War Eagles have now won two games by a total of 10 points, having nipped the sausages 16-12 last week. Frankly, I like seeing teams that have been battle-tested a little bit and have shown the ability to win close games. Remember last year when Hemingway was just cranksmacking everybody in the face with a hammer, closest game was a two-touchdown victory over Lake View then got in a tight game (to C.E. Murray BTW) in the playoffs and lost? To me, to have one of the best players to ever suit up in Greeleyville (Darius Rush) graduate and last year’s stat-tastic QB transfer and be 2-0 against a pair of pretty competitive AA teams, I think you take that. They’ll get even stiffer tests the next two weeks playing The OC Semi-pros and Mullins…Scott’s Branch got the first victory of the Brian Smith era with a 27-13 win over East Clarendon. The Eagles haven’t put up giant numbers offensively yet, though I think that is coming, What they did this past week was return THREE picks for touchdowns. So, obviously they are opportunistic on defense, and crazy athletic. Two of those came via Amonte Brown, who Smith thinks has D-1 potential. If the offense comes along, this team has the talent to be a total handful by the time they start playing Class A competition in mid-September…None of the “up” losses really shocked me, though some of the final scores did. I still think Ridge Spring-Monetta will be a contender down the line. They often play a big boy schedule early, get off to a slow start then get rolling by the time region and the playoffs start. No shame in losing to a good Saluda team, but I was surprised it was as lopsided as it was given what I expect of RS-M’s defense and the clock-controlling offense they run. This week against a pesky and tough Whitmire team will tell the story. Same for Williston. They’ve played way up in competition the past two weeks and it hasn’t gone well. Given the big numbers they have and the supreme talent they possess in guys like Keshawn Toney, I was expecting closer games against Barnwell and Silver Bluff. I may have downplayed the big graduation losses a bit too much. Again, we should get a more clear picture of them as they face Allendale-Fairfax next Friday after a week off...Green Sea-Floyds and Dixie both lost tough games after big wins to start the season. I still like the potential of both in the long-term. Hard to knock them too far losing "up" games to what look like really good teams. The Beavis and Butthead conundrum- THEY’RE NEVER GONNA SCORE! Well maybe not never, but a couple of offenses we’ve become accustomed to seeing chew up yards faster than a team of hungry ninny goats have done big, fat nothing this year. Baptist Hill had one of the most prolific offenses we’ve ever seen last year. They still have Marion Brown at the controls, who certainly knows how to call a play that works, they have 14 starters back from last year including three receivers who put up inane, pinball level stats last season. Even with all that, I wondered how losing one of the best QBs I’ve seen in recent memory (Corey Fields) would impact them. So far, they have two touchdowns in two games, including one this past week against Garrett A&M Academy, upon whom they imparted a colossal rogering last season. Then you have HKT, a team that sometimes struggles at stopping people but puts up points on most everybody. Well, thus far, they lost to Edisto 39-0 and Eau Claire 14-0. I’ve seen Eau Claire and while they do have good size up front and some athletes, they’re defense didn’t really look like a impenetrable wall equipped with razor wire and gun turrets. In HKT’s case, it could just be that they have less than 200 kids, they graduated a great QB in Devante Scott and a do-it-all skill guy in Camry James (who was very much like what you’d get if a cheetah and a lightning bolt somehow mated and had children) and it takes a while to develop younger talent, if it’s on hand at all. They do face a Class A opponent this week in the Mr. T Haircuts, which might level the playing field for them a tad. Then we have Hemingway, whose offense has scored NOT NAM points in two games. They lost 16 starters from last year, they have a new coach and their right-out-of-the-box slate of Lamar and Andrews might have been a recipe for DERPDY DOO from the get-go. They have some super, high-level talent with Darius Taylor and Darius Williams and I think they’ll start to find themselves offensively this week when they battle the Sausages. Poll Time I’ll get back to my ridiculous cross-breeding of Class A polls with countdown shows next week. I’ve actually had requests to do a Dellilah After Dark style version, which either means I’m supposed to work in songs for the lovelorn, or have 27 children. A “cryin’, lovin’, laughin’ or leavin’” version is also in the works. This week, though, I’ll just give you my top 10, followed by what the full S.C. Prep Media Top 10 looked like. You’ll notice I moved Lake View up a bit, vaulted Timmonsville into the top 5, dropped teams who had tough losses to good teams (RS-M, Green Sea and Dixie) a few spots and made room for Branchville, who has a senior-laden team I think bears watching. 1. Lamar 2. C.E. Murray 3. Lake View 4. Timmonsville 5. Green Sea-Floyds 6. Dixie 7. Ridge Spring-Monetta 8. Wagener-Salley 9. Branchville 10. Scott’s Branch S.C. Prep Media Poll 1. Lamar (16) 2. C.E. Murray 3. Lake View 4. Wagener-Salley 5. Ridge Spring-Monetta 6. Dixie and Timmonsville (tie) 8. Green Sea-Floyds 9. Branchville 10. Hemingway Suggested Reading I didn’t go to Great Falls v Whitmire, but I made some crap up and printed it in the newspaper anyway. You can read multiple game capsules here and even more here or can be ignorant for the rest of your dang life, Roy. Choice is yours. Amonte Brown is apparently good at football. Mullins walked all over Creek Bridge Friday. See what I did there? Cuz, um, you walk on a bridge? HAHAHAHA!!!!!!! Six starters back + Lamar and Andrews= DERPDY DOO, as we discussed earlier. I don’t know how Andrew Jackson got to St. John’s, but I think it involves abandoning your bus and crossing several streams on a donkey.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
Categories |