McCormick- 58
Calhoun Falls Charter- Very little. None actually. Whitmire- 26 Ware Shoals- 20 Timmonsville- 56 Great Falls- Stats mean whatever you want them to mean, man… Lewisville- 66 McBee- 12 Hunter-Kinard-Tyler- 44 Blackville-Hilda- 6 Ridge Spring-Monetta- 43 Denmark-Olar- Ladies and gentlemen, the late, great Whitney Houston Estill- 44 North- Now for your headliner…ELLA FITZGERALD! Williston-Elko- 29 Wagener-Salley- 10 Baptist Hill- 56 The Charleston Lowcounrty Academy for Leadership, Empowerment and Machine Shop failed to score in this football contest. St. John’s- 42 Military Magnet- 6 Scott’s Branch- 30 Branchville- 12 C.E. Murray- 22 Cross- 6 Hannah-Pamplico- 44 Creek Bridge- 8 Hemingway- 42 East Clarendon- 14 Lake View- 38 Green Sea-Floyds- 22 Breakdown- We have finally reached the point where pretty much everyone is now into the region slate, so we had no “up” games to speak of this past Friday. As much as I enjoy seeing 1A teams beat the big boys, under the new playoff format, those games really don’t carry much significance, serving mainly as preparation for the real thing. So it’s kind of like kindergarten, minus the juice boxes, nap times and booger-eating, but I digress. I took in the Lewisville-McBee game in person. The final score made it look like a total crank-smacking (a phrase I made up recently to describe really one-side tail-whippings) but was actually fairly competitive in the first half. It was a 24-12 game late in the second and McBee drove inside the Lewisville 10 with a chance to make it a one-score game. Instead, the Lewisville defense held them on downs with under 20 seconds to go until the break. Lewisville, not content to take a knee and head to the half, went deep. McBee had Quentin Sanders single-covered, which proved to be less than optimal. Rhett Cox hit him in stride for a 91-yard touchdown. Lewisville got the ball to start the third, scored quickly again and the game was over. The Lewisville passing offense scuffled a little in the early weeks, but they improve in efficiency and explosiveness every week. That’s partly because the line has gotten healthy, but also because of Cox’s week-by-week improvement. He has so many weapons to work with in Johnny Courtney, Mikial Fourney and Sanders. Of course, Sanders is freaky football cyborg bent on destruction and touchdown-making. He ran for 154 yards on top of his back-breaking touchdown catch and scored five times. The defense made some adjustments in the second half, spreading their linebackers out a little to cut off the outside run game of McBee. It worked to the tune of the Panthers amassing eight yards after halftime. Josh Belk, Fourney and Jaylen McFadden are playing their positions As always, McBee plays hard and Tyrece Wright is a threat to score every time he touches the ball. Shane Hammonds is a good athlete as well, but they are young up front and the defense gives up a lot of big plays. Now, both teams have huge games this week. McBee plays Timmonsville in what amounts to a must-win game. I said a couple of weeks back this was going to end up being for a playoff spot and it sure looks like it will be. The Whirlwinds come in having won three-of-four and have cracked 50 in all three of their wins. The Lions, ranked third in Class A, go to top-ranked Lamar Friday. This is almost a region title game, meaning it’s a battle for a number one playoff seed. It’s the game of the week in Class A…The other really big game in the upperstate last week saw the boys from Chitlinvania fall from the ranks of the unbeaten with a 29-10 loss to Williston-Elko. That region has some good teams, but in retrospect it was an exercise in dumbuttery (is that a word? It may not be a word) on my part to think anyone was going to knock W-E off its decade or so long perch on top. It’ll happen someday, but I’ll have to see that happen before I call for it. QB Tyran Parker had a really good game for the Blue Devils, with 169 total yards and two touchdowns. They’ll face a pesky HKT team this week, but aside from that, W-E will cruise to a region crown. As for the Stump-Whooped All-Americans, I believe they are a very good team. The 29 they gave up is a bit deceiving, because the offense put the defense in terrible positions several times. As I go back and look at their resume, good defense stands out. To shut out The Mr. T Haircuts and hold HKT to six points is an enormous feat. What I do notice, though, is they score roughly 20-some points a game and often do it on teams that give up big point totals on a near-weekly basis. So, maybe what I’ve seen as running the ball and salting games away has actually been a team that is just OK on that side of the ball. I read that they were something like 4-of-17 passing with two picks Friday. A little balance on offense always proves especially important come playoff time. I think they’ll be fine, with only one real challenge left on the slate in Ridge Spring-Monetta…The only other result in the upperstate that really jumped out at me was HKT hammering Blackville-Hilda 44-6. I’m not surprised they won the game, so much, but that score was a shocker. I haven’t found an account of that one (I’d love to hear about it if you were there), so I don’t know if there were a bunch of turnovers or something that led to it getting out of hand. I would suspect Devante Scott put up redonkulous numbers like he normally does, but I think we also have to consider that HKT opened with four brutal games. In the past two weeks, they’ve won by a combined score of 82-6. Might also have to take into account that all my tales of the Hawks physically eating opponents, digesting them and pooping them out the window of a moving car might have been a tad overblown. They are still physical, no doubt, but maybe aren’t quite as good as last year. They are 2-4 now with wins over a pair of teams with one win between them, so…In the lowerstate, the game of the week was without a doubt C.E. Murray’s 22-6 win over Cross. As well at the War Eagle offense played the week before against second-ranked Hemingway (scoring 35 points) I imagine their defense took it personally that they gave up 56. If you’ve seen C.E. Murray, you know they are throwing it A LOT more than the past few years (Darius Rush, ho hum, two more touchdown catches), but their identity is still tied up in being stronger and more physical than you. So, they went ahead and held Cross to under 100 total yards Friday. That is a statement, and that statement is NO RUN WE SMASH!!!!!! Their game in three weeks against the Mr. T Haircuts figures to be for the region crown. As for Cross, they are now in the unfamiliar position of being 2-3 and of scoring 14 or less points three times this year. They should have an easier go of things against Branchville this week, then face a big game vs. the Mr. T Haircuts…Lake View’s win over Green Sea-Floyds wasn’t unexpected. De’Ante Bridgett threw for 244 yards and three scores. Jalik Roberts had 189 yards and three total scores as well. I feel like, because they aren’t putting up “lawd I hop these children’s mamas aren’t seeing this” type stats, lost so much talent from last year and are winning fairly close games, people are sleeping on Lake View a bit. There’s no reason to think they won’t go into the final game against Hemingway 8-1 and that the game won’t be for a region crown. As for GS-F, I thought they had at least a puncher’s chance in this game. They kept it close but came up short of getting a signature win. They should win their next two before getting another shot at a big victory, that being against Hemingway. Suggested reading His name is Rush, but most of his touchdowns are catches. You see what’s up here, the old switcheroo… Lewisville beat McBee if anything this hack writes is to be believed. They’re going playoffin’ in the Pearl of the Piedmont, I do believe… Mataeo Durant scored 5 touchdowns on 10 flippin’ carries. My only question then is why not run him 30 times and score 15 touchdowns? Perhaps this is why I do not coach.
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TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
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