Finally back under the lights of Raider Stadium after almost a month, Habersham Central High School will welcome a tough region test to John Larry Black Field Friday night in Clarke Central High School.
The Raiders (2-4, 1-1 Region 8-AAAAA) are coming off a tough final against Winder-Barrow High School on the road, a game that featured a combined 100 points scored, 139 offensive plays ran, and 1,186 yards of offense.
The visiting Gladiators (4-2, 2-0 8-AAAAA) are coming off back-to-back region wins over Jackson County and Apalachee high schools.
By many accounts, Clarke Central was considered the favorites to win the region as the season began and the team is proving why.
The Gladiators offense is putting up solid numbers from the backfield and with a couple of receivers being big targets on the outside.
Senior quarterback Hezekiah Millender, who committed to Boise State University on August 20, is a transfer out of Arizona and has taken hold of the Gladiator offense.
Millender has completed 58 of his 98 attempts through the air through six games for 1,069 yards, 13 touchdowns and just one interception. He’s crossed the 100-yard mark in five games this season, including 249 yards against Oconee County and 255 versus North Oconee.
On the ground, Millender has contributed 62 carries for 315 yards and six scores.
His partner in the backfield is fellow senior Corey Watkins Jr. Watkins Jr. has a majority of the carries so far with 88. He’s tallied 565 yards, six touchdowns and has lost a pair of fumbles this season. He’s broken the 100-yard mark in both of the last two games and had 203 yards against Jackson County.
Watkins Jr. has also caught nine passes for 125 yards and a touchdown.
Out wide, Millender has a pair of targets in senior Xayvian Berry and sophomore La’gracion Little.
Berry has pulled in 13 passes for 277 yards and found the end zone four times this season. Little has snagged 14 catches for 389 yards and three touchdowns.
“You better be good against the run and the pass,” HCHS Head Coach Benji Harrison said. “It’s not like you can sell out and just stop one. You’ve got to have a good plan to keep everything in front of you.”
Harrison said the Raiders need to force the Gladiators to have to sustain drives and see if they’re up for the task, rather than giving up big plays.
“I told our kids (Wednesday), ‘They’re going to make some plays, they’re going to get some first downs. It’s trying to make that 10-yard gain stay at a 10-yard gain and not become a 40-yard gain,’” Harrison said. “‘See if they’re disciplined enough to drive the field on us and try to eliminate as many explosive plays as you can.’”
A big emphasis for the Raiders defensively, coming off the loss to Winder-Barrow, was tackling. Something that is always important in the game, but missed tackles were a big part of the result last week and will show themselves against Clarke Central.
That emphasis led the coaching staff to do something they don’t do often during the season to avoid unnecessary injury.
“We did our tackling circuit Monday and Tuesday. We hadn’t done that in a while,” Harrison said. “We did it again this week to put an emphasis on that. We had too much reaching, too much arm tackling instead of putting your body on people.”
There was also a challenge issued to the defense after the missed tackles, which lead to giving up 57 points, 408 rushing yards and 532 yards of offense overall against Winder-Barrow.
“‘How do you respond when you feel like you got embarrassed?’ They way we played defensively on Saturday, they ought to be a little embarrassed,” Harrison said. “‘How do you respond to that, because you’ve played much better than that and we expect you to play much better than that.’ We’ve got to do better this week.”
On the other side of the ball, the offense turned possession over five times against the Bulldoggs a week ago. That also garnered emphasis throughout this week of preparation.
The coaches took screenshots from the game film of players with the ball too far from their bodies or simply being too careless with the football, whether the play resulted in a turnover or not, and showed the players.
Then, ball security drills were put into the practice plan.
One of the four fumbles lost by the Raiders was the work of a good defensive play as the running back was fighting for extra yardage. That’s something the coaching staff has to balance in emphasizing ball security, but also wanting players to get all the yardage they can.
“No yard is more important than the ball,” Harrison said. “That’s such a fine line because you want kids to fight for every yard they can get. But you have to put emphasis on the fact there’s a time to know when that fight is over and you got what you could get and be ready to play the next down.”
The team, according to Harrison, had a good week of practice and responded well to all challenges. The coaches also had work to do and needed to respond to the result last week as well.
“As coaches, we’ll never say, ‘That was all on the kids.’ We’ll never do that,” Harrison said. “You’ve got to look at something you were doing as well. We tweaked some things to force the issue to be much more physical than we have been. The response was good from our guys.”
Now, as HCHS returns back to the friendly confines of Raider Stadium, the importance of the result is bigger than any played at home so far this season.
Currently, the Raiders sit in fourth in the region. Their region record tied with Jackson County, but other factors situate HCHS behind the Panthers. Winder-Barrow and Clarke Central sit atop the standings.
While the Raiders certainly aren’t out of the running to compete for the region title just two games into it, the path to the top is certainly more uphill at this point. On the plus side, three of the last four games are at home.
“It’s great to be back home. We’ve been on the road a few weeks in a row and it feels like longer with the bye week we had. I feel like our kids will be excited and our fans will be excited,” Harrison said. “As far as the magnitude of the game, it is a big one. It’s a big game because it’s the next one, but obviously it’s a big one because we’re still in the hunt for this thing. We control everything. We don’t need help from anybody.
“We’ve just got to do our job the rest of the way and that starts this Friday against a pretty talented team in Clarke Central.”
The Raiders and Gladiators will kick off at 7:30 p.m. in Mt. Airy.
