Cedartown falls 20-13 in road trip to Troup
Cedartown will have two more games to figure out their place in the 5-4A picture after they fell in a close road loss to Troup County.
Their two-plus hour trip south last Friday was a defensive struggle for both teams that ended with a 20-13 finish with the Tigers on top, and the Bulldogs looking to regroup once again as they now sit even once again on the season heading into the final stretch of the regular season.
Head coach Doyle Kelley said the game was back and forth throughout, and that both teams played hard in a competitive matchup, but that one had to fall and unfortunately it was his team this time.
“Our guys fought to the end, but we came up short, and we had an opportunity in the fourth quarter to get down and score,” he said.
The game went a full quarter and a half without any scoring, and Cedartown finally drew first blood midway through the second quarter as Kobe Pryor ran for a 48-yard touchdown. The Bulldogs missed the point after.
The Tigers answered before halftime with junior Kobe Hudson running a 10-yard touchdown in with 35 seconds left on the clock, and giving Troup County a 7-6 lead. They added a third quarter score first as Hudson ran 10 yards into the end zone a second time, but this time the Tigers couldn’t covert the PAT.
Cedartown tied it up as Pryor got a second touchdown from 22 yards out, but Troup’s fourth quarter score in a pass between Hudson and Joko Willis finished off Cedartown’s hopes for pulling out a win.
The Bulldogs ended the night with only 142 yards of total offense, with just 118 yards of rushing and quarterback Taji Hudson going 5 for 10 for 24 yards on the night.
Troup County dominated in a statistical sense, gaining 320 yards on offense and Hudson going 16 for 19 in passing for 137 yards. The Tigers put up 183 yards of offense on the ground alone.
However, Kelley did point out one thing about the season thus far. When Cedartown faced topranked opponents during the season, they have lost by a margin of only 18 points between those four games.
“I consider us one of the best teams in the state,” he said. “If we come up against a Cartersville or Troup County again, who knows what might happen.”
Sitting at 4-4 and 2-2 in the region, Cedartown sits tied with Sandy Creek in third place in 5-4A as they get ready to play the Patriots at home this Friday for Senior Night. The Patriots are coming off a 3-2 win over LaGrange this past Thursday in a road game.
Following that, Cedartown will face Chapel Hill to close out the regular sea-
son on the road on Nov. 2, with hopes of getting a playoff game on the road as a third or fourth seed as Cartersville and Troup continue to dominate 5-4A football.
Troup faces Central Carroll this Friday still undefeated in both the regular season and through region play at 8-0 and 5-0 in 5-4A.
Sitting in the top two spots in the region standings,
Cartersville and Troup won’t face each other until the end of the regular season, which will potentially determine the region championship for 2018.
Kelley added that for now, the Bulldogs main focus is to win out against what are likely to be another pair of hard contests ahead against the Patriots and Panthers for the next two weeks.
“We’ve got to win these games if we want to get into the playoffs,” Kelley said. “So that’s our main focus at the moment.”