Friday night's GHSA quarterfinal scouting reports
Teams: Please email game information – stats (offense and defense), names, big plays, etc. – to centralgasports@gmail.com by midnight Friday or by 10:30 a.m. Saturday for inclusion in Central Georgia’s only comprehensive roundup.
GHSA
Quarterfinals
GHSA
Quarterfinal
No. 2 Warner Robins (R1/1, 10-1) at No. 1 Blessed Trinity (R7/1, 8-0)
The road to a third straight final is a tough one for the Demons, who face a team that averages 45.9 points a game and gives up 10.1. The Titans have given up a total of 14 points – all to Chapel Hill in the first round – in the last five games. The Titans did benefit for a huge cancelled game, against Cartersville, which is 10-1 and also in the quarterfinals. Blessed Trinity has beaten two ranked teams: Class A Private No. 1 Eagle’s Landing Christian 38-14 in the opener, 5A No. 5 Calhoun 35-21 in mid-October. The Titans’ first two playoff opponents finished 13-7, the Demons’ first two 13-10. The Titans are a run team, led by Justice Haynes, a sophomore nearing 1,500 yards. The Demons are among the state’s most balanced teams, with QB Jalen Addie passing for 1,414 yards and rushing for 754. Warner Robins has 1,764 passing yards and 2,624 rushing yards, with four major threats. Sophomore Malcom Brown is 141 yards from 1,000, senior Jahlen Rutherford 152. A huge key: who is freshest and sharpest in the fourth quarter. Blessed Trinity hasn’t been challenged since that Calhoun win on Oct. 23, and Warner Robins’ last fourth-quarter sweat of any kind might’ve been in against Veterans, a 35-14 game entering the fourth. Three weeks earlier, the Demons survived Ware County by three. But a huge note: Other than the championships, this is Warner Robins’ first road playoff game since 2016. And the Titans’ last home playoff loss was in 2013 in Class AAA to Washington County, 46-17.
Eastside (R8/2, 10-2) at No. 10 Jones County (R4/1, 9-3)
Jones County has become a perennial deep-run team, while the Eagles are in their second quarterfinal in three years and 11th playoff trip since 2000. They’re on a good run, going 12-1 in 2018 with the quarters loss to Blessed Trinity at home. Eastside is 5-1 on the road this season, including last week’s 37-7 win at New Manchester. Both teams are the only survivors from their regions left as they prepare for their first meeting. Jones County has the longest winning streak in 5A at nine straight games, Eastside checking in at a respectable six straight. Starting QB Jayden Woods is back after missing several games with a leg injury. Wideout Dayton Green moved to QB, and Eastside went 5-2. Woods has passed for 738 yards in five games, with four touchdowns and four interceptions. Green has passed for 787 yards in seven games, with nine touchdowns and one interception, but he hasn’t thrown a pass since Oct. 23, having caught 15 passes for 188 yards in the last five games. Jones County’s John Alan Richter has completed 59.5 percent of his passes for 1,780 yards and 16 touchdowns to eight interceptions. Maleek Wooten and Zion Ragins have teamed for 1,225 receiving yards and 13 scores, helping to open things up for Andrew Carner, who had 1,378 rushing yards and 25 touchdowns.
No. 1 Marist (R6/1, 10-0) at No. 8 Perry (R4/1, 8-4)
A battle of the tradition rich and the tradition challenged. One has eight region titles and one state championship since 2000, the other recently getting its first region title since 1959 and hoping for its first semifinal trip since 1959. Perry is playing at home in the stadium named for the head coach in that 1959 season, Herb St. John. The Panthers are on a roll, winners of six straight, in all forms and fashion. But the Panthers will have to be about perfect on offense against a team that’s given up all of 27 points this season, 21 coming in the regular-season finale to Mays, Marist putting up 52 points. The War Eagles have shut out four ranked teams and given up three to another. Perry last win over a No. 1 was in 1998, 27-24 over Mary Persons. Kevin Smith is Perry’s seventh head coach since then. Marist’s Alan Chadwick took over in 1985, has never had a losing season, and owns a pair of state titles, the War Eagles reaching the semifinals eight times since 2000 alone.
No. 3 Peach County (R2/1, 9-1) at No. 10 Oconee County (R8/1, 10-0)
Road trips have been rare for Peach County in the playoffs, but they’ve been pretty good. The Trojans did lose 36-3 last year at Cedar Grove in a rematch of the 2018 championship game, but Peach County has beaten Calhoun (22-7), Greater Atlanta Christian (28-23), and Westminster (27-17) in one stretch (after losing 20-14 in overtime at Calhoun to end the 2015 season). This is an easier trip than metro Atlanta, heading to Watkinsville to face a team that has won 16 straight at home, the loss coming near the end of the 2018 season, 23-8 to North Oconee. The Warriors are in their second straight quarterfinal, which hasn’t happened since the turn of the century when they won the 1999 state AAA title and went to two straight quarters. They went through a stretch of only two playoff trips in eight years, but have consecutive double-digit win seasons under seventh-year head coach Travis Noland (177-86 at Oconee County and Stephens County). He was Stephens County’s head coach when the Trojans survived a 56-42 wild one in a 2005 quarterfinal meeting.
Bleckley County (R3/4, 8-3) at No. 2 Rabun County (R8/1, 11-1)
The road to Bleckley County’s first semifinal trip in program history involves a ride of about 220 miles, and between three and four hours, the final leg through the hills and mountains of northwest Georgia. The Royals will be closer to Greenville, S.C., and Asheville, N.C. than Atlanta when they take on the Wildcats, who are in their sixth straight quarterfinal. Rabun County has won at least 11 games six straight years, and has averaged 45 points a game in five of those years. This year, the Wildcats are getting 48.1 points a game and giving up 15, to 35.5 and 19.5 for Bleckley County. Jaybo Shaw, an all-state quarterback at Flowery Branch who signed with Georgia Tech and finished at Georgia Southern, succeeded his dad Lee in 2019, and is 23-2 in two seasons. Rabun County has 3,029 yards passing, thanks to South Carolina commit Gunnar Stockton’s 2,842 yards on 71.6-percent completion rate, 44 touchdown passes countered by one interception on 268 attempts. Stockton leads the Wildcats with 1,276 rushing yards and 22 touchdowns, just ahead of Lang Windham’s 1,233 and 12. Dominic Sasser has completed 50.8 percent of his passes for 1,653 yards and 21 TDs to five INTs, with Jahvon Butler at 1,092 yards rushing, Chuckie Stephens scoring 14 rushing TDs. Rabun County hasn’t lost to an unranked team since Fitzgerald’s 28-17 upset in the 2018 quarters.