The Gordon Central Warriors had a tough start to their season last Friday with a road loss at Murray County, but there’s no time for them to hang their heads as they have another tough non-region challenge this week.
The Warriors will host Southeast Whitfield on Friday at 7:30 p.m. at Ratner Stadium in hopes of turning things around after their 55-13 loss against Murray County. Despite the loss in the opener, Gordon Central coach David Humphreys said he expects his players to be able to refocus in practice this week and focus on building on the positive things that they did in their first game.
“We felt like there were some good things, but we just couldn’t sustain it at times,” said Humphreys. “We moved the ball on offense, but we seemed to have bad plays at bad times. (Our quarterback) Martavius (Harris) had a pretty good game other than one or two bad plays. Once Murray County got that interception for a touchdown, that kind of sent us into a tailspin. But from what I’ve seen the last few days, the kids have handled it well. They seem to be ready to go to work and fix it.”
Harris threw for 140 yards and a touchdown, and receiver Corey Dixon caught six passes for 77 yards and a touchdown as they were a few of the bright spots for the Warriors.
The Raiders (1-0) got off to an incredible start last Saturday when they defeated Coahulla Creek in their opener 49-0. Humphreys said he knows his team has quite a challenge in front of them, but they will go into it looking to improve.
“Southeast is a good team,” said Humphreys. “They hammered Coahulla Creek on Saturday, and I think they only allowed them somewhere around 15 yards of total offense. We knew going into the season we had a few games that were going to be tough. We’re going to have our hands full with (Southeast). They don’t seem to do anything flashy, they just play good defense. But we’ll make our adjustments and try to go out there and give them our best.”
If the season-opening loss wasn’t tough enough already, the Warriors also lost a key piece on both sides of the ball to an injury. Cameron Pierce, who was expected to take reps at backup quarterback, along with his running back and linebacker duties, suffered a wrist injury early in the game at Murray County and will be out as many as seven or eight weeks.
Despite Southeast Whitfield trailing the all-time series 6-14 to Gordon Central, they’ve walked away as winners of the last three, including a 45-0 win last year against the Warriors.
Humphreys said there are several keys his team must focus on in order to have success on Friday night.
“We’ve got to finish drives for one thing,” said Humphreys. “We got the ball inside the 10 a few times last Friday and didn’t get any points. We can’t have negative plays in those situations. On defense, we’ve got to eliminate big plays. We gave up a lot of yards on the ground against Murray and a lot of that was because of missed tackles.”
Prediction
GC needs to rebound in a big way after a disheartening loss at Murray County that really wasn’t very competitive, but unfortunately Southeast Whitfield looks to be a program on the right track just like the Indians.
The Warriors need to get off to a fast start to build some confidence or it could be another long night at the office. The Raiders have a potent offense and stout defense that’s ready to build upon their great start.
Score:
Southeast Whitfield wins, 30-7.