Habersham Central High School’s varsity football team is heading down the road Friday to meet up with Lee County High School in Leesburg for a first-round matchup in the Georgia High School Association 5A state playoffs.
The Raiders, who are having a community-welcomed send off at 9:50 a.m. at the high school, finished the regular season as the fourth seed in Region 8 with a 4-6 overall record and a 3-3 mark in region play.
Lee County will represent Region 2 as the No. 1 seed after a perfect 10-0 record this season.
The opposition
The Trojans have been an offensive force this season, scoring a total of 543 points. They’ve scored 60-plus in four games, including two of the final three. The team has scored under 40 points just once this season, a 35-23 win over Thomas County Central High School at the end of September.
“They’re a little bit unique in how they do it,” HCHS Head Coach Benji Harrison said. “They’ll throw the ball, but they want to snap it as fast as they possibly can and they run the football right at you.”
Lee County has put up 2,747 total yards on the ground to this point in their 2024 campaign. That leaves them with averages of 274.7 yards per game and 7.3 yards per carry rushing. The team has combined for 50 rushing touchdowns.
The Trojans have rushed for more than 300 yards in a game on three different occasions this fall, including 361 in their final outing of the regular season.
Senior quarterback Weston Bryan, a Georgia Southern University commit, has carried the ball 150 times for 952 yards and 24 scores. He’s crossed the 100-yard threshold in four games this season.
Senior running back Ousmane Kromah, a University of Georgia commit, has toted the rock 126 times for 1,003 yards and 13 touchdowns. He has five games with 100-plus yards.
“It all starts with the quarterback. He is a big ol’ physical kid that’s got good speed,” Harrison said. “Obviously the running back is an explosive player. It’s crazy they’ve been putting up those points and it’s predominantly on the ground. They can throw it, but they want to get as many snaps as they can in the game and get it in those tow guys’ hands as much as possible and say, ‘Here we come. Let’s see if you can stop it.’”
The Trojans pushing the pace of the game on offense will prove to be a major test to the conditioning of the HCHS defense. The Raiders haven’t faced a team that’s consistently kept an up-tempo style throughout a game this year. The closest to look at would be Clarke Central High School, but, even then, they weren’t exactly rushing things.
“I think that’s the hardest challenge,” Harrison said. “You can try to do that as much as you can at practice. You can simulate as much as you want to, but it’s going to take a series or two to adjust to (their pace).
“We can’t simulate how they play offense exactly. Nobody can,” he continued. “It’s going to take a little bit of an adjustment to do that, but we’ve got to adjust quick because they aren’t going to wait around and allow us to adjust.”
According to the head man, the coaching staff will be focused on getting a defensive call in, even if its not necessarily the right call in that moment. The reason for that is so that everyone on the field is on the same page.
This game could be the biggest test of the year for the defense to play on feel and intuition, but with major discipline in knowing assignments and where to line up.
Game plan
How does one slow down an offense with that much firepower in the back field? The Raiders will have to fight offense with offense, of course.
While the defense will be tasked with at least slowing down the Trojans, the offense will have to try to sustain drives and keep the ball out of Lee County’s hands.
“The thing you have to do to them is you have to help your defense by playing good offense,” Harrison said. “Obviously they feel like the more snaps they get in the game, the more opportunities they have to score, which is usually how it is. We have to make sure we limit their possessions by making sure we can move the ball on offense.”
With that, the Raiders will play a little bit slower. Not necessarily safer, but more methodical in getting to the line and snapping the ball. Traveling fans might notice more pre-snap activity than usual to “slow it down a little bit and try to manipulate the clock as much as you can.”
There’s a famous quote attributed to Mike Tyson, which says, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Harrison believes HCHS will need to weather furious opening to the game from Lee County, as the Trojans try to establish dominance early. Then the Raiders need to deliver a punch.
“When you play a team that’s talented like Lee, you’ve got to withstand that initial five minutes of the game where they’re going to try to dominate the game. That’s what they’ve done to a lot of opponents this year,” Harrison said. “I told our kids we’ve got to weather that storm, create some good things and just prolong that game. The longer you can stay in a game like this, the pressure shifts to totally to them.”
Next man up
The Raiders will be without a key player on both sides of the ball as they head into the playoffs.
On the offensive side, junior running back Donnie Warren is dealing with an injury that will keep him out of the contest.
Senior back Antonio “AC” Cantrell, who was already splitting carries with Warren, will shoulder the burden of his tag team partner being out. Having been a key piece of the running game all year, Harrison doesn’t believe there will be too much of a shift in how the Raiders run the ball against Lee County.
“You have to be a little more creative in how you run it,” Harrison said. “AC, he’s very capable, but you lose a set that we’ve used a lot. Our two-back set, you don’t have that as much as you used to.”
That’s not to say HCHS won’t be lining up in a two-back set Friday night, but it’ll look a little bit different with much less experience mirroring two years varsity time from Cantrell.
On the other side of the ball, junior defensive end Jackson Adams will be serving a suspension due to the result of some extra curricular activities during the end of the final regular season game against Jackson County High School.
Aaron Hitchcock, who has played a good many snaps at defensive end this season will take up some slack on one side of the line.
One thing that was somewhat of a nuisance earlier in the season is now going to prove beneficial for the Raiders with Adams sitting this one out. Because the coaches rotated players all around the defensive line in the first few games, there are a few players with some experience setting the edge on defense.
“Because we’ve had to (move players around) some during the year, we’re not asking guys to play anything they’ve never played,” Harrison said.
Junior Austin Williams and sophomore Anthony Garrido, who have both seen snaps on the defensive line this year, will increase that number against the Trojans.
“Early on in the year, we made the decision we were playing some guys too many snaps and it was showing. We eliminated that, but, in a game like this, some of those guys will have to step up and do that,” Harrison said. “Especially the way we’re wanting to ply on the defensive side of the ball. We’re going to have to roll some guys and try to keep guys as fresh as we can with how we’ve got to be aggressive against those guys.”
Potential upset
At 4-6, it’s hardly shocking to say that an HCHS victory would be classified as possibly the biggest upset in these playoffs. MaxPreps has Lee County ranked as the No. 3 team in the state with multiple Division I players on the roster, including a defensive end committed to the University of Florida among the others mentioned.
But, the Trojans defense has allowed teams to put up points, including 35 to Colquitt County High School and 48 points to Houston County High School.
And the Raiders haven’t exactly had many issues moving the football in 2024.
“They’ve given up some points defensively, so I feel like if our kids will come play physical, we will be able to move the football on them,” Harrison said. “Our offensive line has to be willing to come off and play physical through the whistle because initial blocks aren’t going to block these cats. You’ve got to fight through the whistle.”
Harrison has presented this game to his team as an opportunity. An opportunity to play together again when most teams in the state have already taken up their pads and moved on to winter sports. An opportunity to show that they’ve earned the right to be in the playoffs.
“We’ve seen things happen over the years,” he said. “Upsets happen every week in some capacity, so why can’t we try to be part of that same story?”
The Raiders and Trojans will kick off at 7:30 p.m. in Leesburg Friday night.
