McCormick- 32
Calhoun Falls- 12 Dixie- 27 Whitmire- If the spread was 28, they beat it Lamar- 27 Lake View- 6 Blacksburg- 28 McBee- 27 Green Sea-Floyds- 19 Timmonsville- 13 Blackville-Hilda- 2 Ridge Spring-Monetta- They lost and the other team scored two points, so you might can figure this one out on your own. Denmark-Olar- 22 Estill- 16 Williston-Elko- 16 HKT- 14 Wagener-Salley- 54 North- Who didn’t love Jami Gertz back in the day? Bethune-Bowman- 36 Scott’s Branch- 23 Branchville- 20 Cross- As out Kazakh friends would say, “нөл” Charleston Charter Academy for car detailing and interpretive dance- 26 Creek Bridge- 20 Breakdown- The big question going into Friday was how Lamar would bounce back from its first regular season loss in three years. The answer was “by beating someone’s face in.” Their game with a good Lake View squad wasn’t quite as close as the 27-6 score would make it appear. Playing against a team you’d probably feel good about holding under 30 points, the Silver Foxes allowed 30 total yards of offense. That included limiting dynamic QB Adarrian Dawkins to -15 total yards. The six points came via a kickoff return. With QB Cam Galloway lost for the year to injury, Lamar didn’t ask backup J.J. Langley to do too much. He obviously managed the offense well and allowed Jacquez Lucas and Malik Johnson to run up-and-down the field on the Wild Gator D like a couple of deer hepped up on truck stop speed. That’s a really awful analogy there, because now I’m picturing Bambi in a Kenworth pulling logs, hitting up Rubber Duck on the CB to score enough tweek to keep him awake long enough to get his load to A-Town, good buddy. What was I saying now? I am taking nothing away from Gray’s win over Lamar last week. They made big plays in the passing game and deserved to win, but I think the Galloway injury early and a three-week layoff played a big part. I think the Lamar we saw this past Friday is a lot more indicative of the kind of team they are. My clandestine Lamar mole told be he thinks the loss may actually end up serving them well. Last year, they played with a gigantic chip on their shoulder after losing in the title game to Lake View the year before, so he thinks the Gray loss could actually re-focus them and make them play like they’ve got something to prove. A really PO’d and intensely focused Lamar doesn’t seem like a thing anyone else should be interested in. They are 5-1 now and will start region play this week against Timmonsville… I’m sure a lot of people thanked their lucky stars they didn’t have to sit through Blackville-Hilda’s 2-0 win over Ridge Spring-Monetta Friday night. I am not among them. I bet they just beat the T-total crap out of one another. I bet that was like to two dudes standing toe-to-toe and headbutting one another until one got wobbly, said he couldn’t see out of his left eye and tapped out, while the other derided him as a sissy. That’s two really physical football teams that, while they throw it here and there, just want to run it down your throat and physically maul you in the trenches. I’m sure some folks were surprised at the outcome, but I really wasn’t. B-H has a pair of good runners and an athletic QB in the awesomely named Adonis Davis who can beat you a lot of way. As the score indicates, though, they are really, really good on defense. Even in their loss to the red hot Chitlinville team the other week, they kept it close and competitive. They shut out HKT and the Mr. T Haircuts before that. On top of that, RS-M hasn’t been rolling people the way I expected at the outset of the season. Granted, they lost a great one in QB Tyson Bettis from last year, a winner with outstanding physical tools, but they returned most everyone else, particularly on defense. I was surprised then that the allowed 30 in a win over Denmark-Olar and barely got by a Williston-Elko team that is really struggling. Now, the loss does not end their region title hopes. They get second-ranked Wagener-Salley this week (aka New Chitlinland). If they win that one, they could force a three-way, round-robin style tie at the top (Wagener already beat Blackville-Hilda), or they could win it outright with a win and a lot of help they probably aren’t going to get. With a loss, they’ll be 3-4, will have lost two straight in the region and will probably be looking at a third-place finish. I will note that they always seem to play their best late in the season, so we’ll see what happens. I normally wouldn’t get ahead of myself by pronouncing a region race over this early in the year, but here I am, pronouncing a region race over. Dixie took a hard-fought 27-0 win over Whitmire Friday. It was a defensive struggle in both directions, with Whitmire not even cracking 100 total yards and Dixie barely managing 200 themselves. However, they put the Wolverines in bad field position all night and forced a couple of key turnovers. They didn’t (and don’t) throw it much, but Dawson Glenn was 4-of-5 for 82 yards which provided a little bit of balance. Deiveon Donald and Chandler Smalley didn’t put up their normal gaudy rushing stats, but they combined for 128 and three touchdowns. The contributions of Bradley Nickles need to be acknowledged too, since he kicked a pair of 40-plus yard field goals. You can’t overstate what an advantage that gives a team in the Class A ranks, where many teams don’t even bother kicking extra points. This game is a good microcosm of what Dixie brings to the table. They aren’t flashy and nothing on the stat sheet makes you mess yourself, they are just solid in all three phases, they have good senior leaders and they don’t hurt themselves with dumb mistakes. Barring something unforeseen (and I’m talking like locusts swarms or alien invasions of Due West), they’ll easily take care of Ware Shoals and Calhoun Falls Charter, win the region and get a first round playoff bye. That might mean a meeting with RS-M, but we’re still more than a month away from that. Quick Hits- So, I got a tad too smarmy and glib for my own good in assessing McBee’s chances against Blacksburg. I said “it may not go well for them” which on this BLAWG is like having an old lady at church say “Bless your heart.” They’d gotten trucked in every game, Blacksburg is a good AA team who came in at 4-2 and dang if McBee didn’t lead that thing in the fourth quarter. They lost 28-27, but that represents a heck of an effort. If you really look at it, they’ve played a monster schedule and did so under a new coach running a completely new offensive scheme. They are young, but maybe things are starting to click for them. They have some talent in guys like Tyrece Wright (athletic people named Wright are very plentiful in McBee) who had two touchdowns Friday. They aren’t going to challenge Lamar, but they need only beat Great Falls or Timmonsville to make the playoffs. If they play like they did Friday night, that could very easily happen… The Mr. T Haircuts had probably their best all-around performance of the year in Friday’s win over Scott’s Brach. Jesus Benjamin ran for more than 200 yards and the team is now 4-3 heading into what should be 5-3 as they play Cross. If the offense keeps clicking, their games against C.E. Murray and Branchville might be interesting…Not sure what has happened to Timmonsville’s offense. They were cruising right along, then managed only 19 points the last two weeks. The level of competition (a sneaky good Green Sea-Floyds and resurgent Hemingway) might have something to do with that, but that problem ain’t going away Bubba, since Lamar comes to town tonight. I understand that is Timmonsville’s homecoming, which seems like a grievous oversight on someone in the scheduling department’s part. Suggested reading (and viewing) Come on Rubber Duck, coffee and Pall Mall’s only keep a man awake for so long. You can read several game capsules here, including one on the Mr. T Haircuts. Or you can choose not to and say you did, but there’s a big, poisonous spider in that web of lies you’re spinning, Marvin. If you like football and junk but not, like words and stuff, there are a lot of short capsules and video clips here. I DON’T WANT WORDS MR. NEWSPAPER MAN. I WANT SOME VIDYA OF BRANCHVILLE! Region I is settled science, people. Cross didn’t win Friday, but they still got an amazing performance. One that made me want to make my way to the fellowship hall for covered dish delights. NOTE: I’ll post my top 10 poll tomorrow along with my CRANKSMACKS of the week. If you know of a Class A player who offered up a noteworthy performance, please let me know via DM at @CNR_Sports on Twitter or via email at [email protected]
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TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
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