Several teams on the brink of reaching milestones

Published 7:00 pm Thursday, November 3, 2016

Welcome to the final week of the high school football regular season. It’s been a season full of ups and downs, at least for everyone except Dalton. The Catamounts began the season by breaking their losing streak to Calhoun and have only continued to rise since, in both their quality of play as well as their state ranking.

Other teams haven’t been as impressive, but still have plenty to play for in the first week in November.

For Dalton and the two Murray County schools, this week is the de facto start of the postseason. The Catamounts have secured their spot in the playoffs, but can clinch a region championship outright for the third time in four years with a victory at Allatoona. Murray County and North Murray are both in must-win situations in the Region 6-3A play-in games. Northwest Whitfield knows it’s going to the playoffs, but will work through the bye week and wait to find out where it falls in the final Region 6-4A pecking order.

There’s plenty of intrigue as we come down the stretch. I hope the ride can last a few weeks longer.

• Dalton is 9-0 for the first time since 1994, when the Cats roared to 13-0 before falling to Thomas County Central 31-7 in the state semifinals. Despite that impressive mark, the Cats haven’t quite sewn up Region 6-6A just yet. Dalton’s 31-14 win over Harrison has it in a good position going into this week’s game at defending state champion Allatoona. But a Dalton loss tonight would put Allatoona, Dalton and Harrison into a three-way tie.

The first tiebreaker, head-to-head results, wouldn’t yield a winner. The second tiebreaker is point differential with a cap of 17 points. Harrison beat Allatoona 43-19, so the Hoyas have a point differential of zero when factoring in the 17-point loss to Dalton. Dalton is at plus-17 and Allatoona is at minus-17.

Should Dalton lose by 17 points or more, the teams would go to the third tiebreaker, which is least points allowed in games against the tied teams.

The Cats can render all of this tiebreaker talk moot if they just win tonight. They are in a good position regardless, but I know the Cats will be raring to finish a 10-0 season for the first time since before any of the current players were alive.

• Hopefully Dalton can finish the job, because I’ve had just about as much talk about region tiebreaker rules as I can take. It was an interesting week for Region 6-4A, where on Monday the Bruins believed they would be the region’s No. 1 seed if their three-way tie with Pickens and Ridgeland were to hold through tonight. However, after a dispute concerning the verbiage of the region guidelines, Northwest now knows it will be the No. 2 seed unless Southeast were to upset Ridgeland.

That’s a tall order for the Raiders, but they certainly have motivation to do just that despite the fact they have been eliminated from the postseason. Southeast is looking to secure a winning season for the second time in three years, a feat which hasn’t been accomplished since the Raiders had back-to-back winning seasons in 1985-86.

• North Murray, despite finishing as the top seed in its sub-region, will travel to Adairsville tonight for its Region 6-3A play-in game. The region had its own dispute in the offseason, which concerned how the region would be divided and what would be the procedure for determining the playoff teams. The Georgia High School Association eventually had to intervene, splitting the region into North and South sub-regions.

The teams in the South believe they are the much stronger sub-region, and the regular season crossover games support that theory with those teams posting a 9-1 record against the North. Therefore, they pushed for a play-in game structure that used a No. 1 vs. No. 4 and No. 2 vs. No. 3 model, so that there was a chance the South could win all four play-in games and secure the four spots in the postseason.

The GHSA agreed and instituted that one side of the region would get to host all play-in games. So all of the South teams get to host this year, while the North gets to host next year.

• Murray County is also traveling to a lower-seeded team in Bremen. The Indians were beat 42-14 by the Blue Devils earlier this year in a game which was tied at 14 at the half, but they have been playing better in recent weeks with wins over Ringgold, Coahulla Creek and Lakeview Fort-Oglethorpe.

Murray County had an off week to prepare for this game and knows exactly what to expect from the Blue Devils. Bremen is coming off a physical game against Calhoun. It’s tough to beat a team twice in one season, so I would expect the Indians to put up a better showing at the least.

• One of the benefits of the Region 6-3A setup is that Coahulla Creek gets another shot at a game it should be competitive in against Haralson County. The Rebels are 2-7 on the year and lost 50-0 to North Murray on Sept. 16.

The Colts have shown improvement in flashes during the second half of the season as they have found some success in the running game, scored some defensive touchdowns and blocked an incredible 10 kicks. Coahulla Creek is itching to put all of those things together and get its first win.

• Christian Heritage also gets the benefit of playing a winnable region crossover game as they host King’s Ridge Christian School. The Lions got their first win three weeks ago against North Cobb Christian.

Christian Heritage hopes to be healthy this week as starting quarterback Brandon Poag should be back after missing the Mount Zion game with a concussion and wide receiver Wesley Hagan should also return from a hamstring injury.