By Stan Caldwell
stanmansportsfan.com
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and with the holidays comes the end of another year for high school football in Mississippi.
Despite its small size, high school football in Mississippi is a big deal, with talent that second to none. Most national publications rank Mississippi among the top 10-12 In the nation for the quality of the game here.
That quality has been on clear display the past two weekends at M.M. Roberts Stadium on the Southern Miss campus. The MHSAA High School Football Classic decided state champions in all six classes on the first weekend in December. The following week, it was the Mississippi-Alabama All-Star Game.
First, the MHSAA put on a great show for its state championship weekend. The six games drew large crowds, especially for each of the night games, the 6A game on Friday between Oak Grove and Oxford and the 5A game featuring Picayune and West Point.
I watched every down of all six games this year, and, believe it or not, there haven’t been many years when I did that.
When I was covering the state championships for the Hattiesburg American, I might come in late to the early game, if it was a game where I wasn’t covering either team. Or I might head back early if the team, or teams, I was there to cover played one or both of the afternoon games, especially if it was Friday and I had to be back at the stadium early the next day.
But I was contacted by Robert Wilson, an old friend from his days at the Jackson Clarion-Ledger and asked to work the games for the website he’s associated with now, Mississippi Scoreboard.
So, I got to see six very different football games involving 12 unique teams. Here are some of my thoughts on the games, as well as a postscript on the All-Star Game.
Starting on Friday, the Class 3A final between Jefferson Davis County and Noxubee County brought in two teams with a combined 11 defeats, and it was the late-charging Jaguars who prevailed.
At one point this season, JDC was 2-6, but Lance Mancuso doesn’t have all those championship rings for nothing.
He willed what was by Bassfield standards an average football team into the playoffs – no mean feat in the toughest region in 3A – and they just kept getting stronger as the postseason progressed. And when Mancuso gets to a championship game, he doesn’t lose.
Mancuso is now eight for eight in championship games, winning for the newly-unified school its second 3A state title in three years of existence. And it goes with the one he won at Seminary (2003) and the five he won at Bassfield before consolidation (2009, 2012-15).
Lumberton’s loss in the Class 1A final that followed on Friday was simply a case of one team being physically bigger and stronger than the other.
The Panthers, on defense, take to heart the great Leslie Peters’ philosophy on defense, “mobile, agile and hostile.” But that also means smaller and lighter. And the big backs from Nanih Waiya, behind the bulldozers up front, just wore down Lumberton.
Time of possession isn’t always a telling statistic in a game summary, but it was decisive for the Warriors.
They kept the football for more than 30 minutes of game time, including a back-breaking drive that ate up 9 minutes, 10 seconds, covered 94 yards and resulted in a touchdown that made the score 21-6 with nine minutes to play in the fourth quarter.
Beyond that, it kept Lumberton’s standout junior Robert Henry in the defensive backfield, where he couldn’t hurt Nanih Waiya as much. Henry broke off a 50-yard touchdown run on the first play of the game, but he didn’t get many more chances to make plays like that.
The good news for Lumberton is the Panthers return most of their top guys.
The 6A championship was a thriller won by Oxford after Oak Grove dominated the first half and led 21-3 at halftime.
As the second half began, I remarked to my old friend and former colleague Tim Doherty that it was Oak Grove’s game to lose, and I don’t know if I jinxed the Warriors or what.
You can – and if you are a fan of the Warriors, you probably have already – gone back and forth on whether Oak Grove lost it, or Oxford just won it.
The one big strategic move that Chargers coach Chris Cutcliffe made at halftime was to put his best player, the beefy J.J. Pegues, in some different formations to get him the ball in some different spaces.
As a tight end, Pegues made a fingertip grab of a pass over the middle that he took for a 62-yard touchdown, then later made a diving catch along the sideline for a key third-down pickup and finally took a power sweep around left end for a big gainer to set up the go-ahead score.
Still, Warriors coach Drew Causey had two opportunities to add to what had become a precarious lead in the second half with field-goal attempts. He chose to go for it on fourth down both times and both times the Warriors were stopped, the second time at the goal line.
I’ll give him full credit, Causey manned up and answered the why question in the postgame interview, saying he felt like going for it was the best option in those situations.
And, to be honest, the first one was on the outskirts of his kicker’s range and the second was literally inches away from what could have given Oak Grove a 12-point lead in the fourth quarter. The Warrior players insisted that Damon Stewart scored on the fourth-down quarterback sneak, but that’s not how the line judge saw it.
At any rate, Oxford snatched the victory from Oak Grove’s grasp, and as I shared with one of my friends on the Warriors’ sideline, “this one is going to sting for a while.”
The best football team I saw play all weekend was the Corinth team that decimated Poplarville in the 4A championship game Saturday afternoon.
The Warriors – not to be confused with those from Oak Grove or Nanih Waiya – had the football nine times in the game. They scored touchdowns on their first eight possessions and took a knee at the end of the game on the last one.
As the points mounted and Corinth kept scoring, it sent us writers in the press box combing the archives to determine the most points a team has scored in a championship game.
The Warriors didn’t quite break the record – 60, by Bassfield against Calhoun City in 2014 – but they came close, whipping the Hornets 55-21.
That Poplarville came back in the second half and put together a couple of long touchdown drives says a lot about the character of their kids not to quit, but it was Corinth’s day from start to finish.
A couple of fun facts before moving on. Corinth had a linebacker named Carter Bonds who was credited with 27 tackles, a figure I’ve never seen a player reach, and the Warriors did not punt the football at all in any of their last four games. That, my friends, is dominance.
Besides Jeff Davis County, there was another newly-consolidated school that made it to the finals, that being Northside, located in Shelby in Bolivar County.
Northside is the merger of Shelby Broad Street and Mound Bayou JFK that was done last year after a court challenge to the consolidation by Mound Bayou parents failed.
One way to mollify those parents is to put together a winning football program on the fly, which is what the Gators have done in two years. Northside came into the 2A final undefeated, having allowed just 34 points total all season.
Unfortunately, they ran into a Taylorsville team with a chip on its shoulder after losing in the finals last year without their star quarterback Ty Keyes.
Against Northside, Keyes made one spectacular throw and a lot of mundane passes while operating an offense that wasn’t going to be stopped for long.
Northside’s speed on defense caused a couple of sacks in the first quarter, and the Gators led 12-7 early in the second period, when the Tartars hit the gas and left Northside gasping for air.
Keyes’ individual stats were OK: 12 of 18 passing for 124 yards, 10 carries for a net of 50 yards and a touchdown. But the key stats were all team stats: 359 yards offense (including 235 on the ground), 42 points (plus a kickoff return touchdown) and no turnovers.
And the scary part for 2A teams looking ahead? The Tartars return Keyes and game MVP Jeffrey Pittman (13 rushes, 113 yards, 3 TDs) next year, along with several other skill players.
The last game of the championship weekend was the 5A final, a much-anticipated clash between undefeated Picayune and three-time champion West Point.
In the movies, the Maroon Tide would have produced an emotional victory for their longtime coach Dodd Lee, who last summer had announced his retirement effective at the end of the season.
Lee coached this season with a heavy heart after one of his adult daughters was killed in a car crash back in February, and his players clearly wanted Lee to go out as a champion.
Picayune played hard and were in the game all the way behind 3,000-yard rusher Cameron Thomas, but in the end the script didn’t work out. West Point was too strong in too many areas.
The Green Wave scored touchdowns on three consecutive drives in the first half to take a lead, weathered a Maroon Tide comeback and maintained their lead every time Picayune came close.
Thomas, a 5-7, 150-pound speedster, did his best, rushing for 147 yards and two scores, and taking a pass 70 yards for a big fourth-quarter touchdown.
But it wasn’t enough. I heard one of the Picayune players saying as he heading into the locker room, “too bad we didn’t get the finish we wanted.”
When it was over, West Point had its four-peat – putting it in the company of South Panola and Bassfield as the only schools to win four straight titles. And the Green Wave tied South Panola with its 11th state championship in all.
Last weekend, I was back at The Rock for the All-Star Game, and it turned out to be a pretty good football game.
Mississippi won it 17-16 in overtime when Alabama’s PAT kick after scoring a TD in overtime was blocked.
I was there on behalf of the Biloxi Sun-Herald working on the angle of George County defensive tackle McKinnley Jackson.
Jackson more than delivered, spending as much time in the Alabama backfield as the Alabama backs themselves. Jackson only had three tackles and no sacks, but that was largely because he drew a constant double-team and Alabama ran away from whatever side he lined up on.
He was a popular choice for Mississippi MVP, and he plays like and carries himself like a guy you can expect to see on TV on autumn Sundays in a few years. Him and maybe a couple of others.
Overall, it was a nice way to put a coda on another outstanding high school football season in Mississippi.
It was overall a good year, and I can’t wait until next year.
Stan Caldwell is a 35-year veteran sports writer in the Hattiesburg area, and most recently served as sports information director at Pearl River Community College in Mississippi.
