Published: November 05, 2009 11:18 pm      

Cats aren’t ready to rest

State-bound Dalton has chance at 7-4A title

When Dalton takes to Harmon Field tonight for the final week of the regular season, the circumstances will be much better than a year ago.

In 2008, the Catamounts lost sub-region games to Rome and Sequoyah, which pitted them against Hillgrove in a Region 7-4A playoff game where a win was necessary just to make the state playoffs. Dalton lost and finished the year with a 7-3 record.

This year, the Catamounts (7-2) are guaranteed a spot in the Class 4A state playoffs after beating Northwest Whitfield 35-11 last week to win Sub-region 7A-4A. They’ll host undefeated and fifth-ranked Hiram (9-0), the Sub-region 7B-4A champion, at 7:30 tonight for the 7-4A title.

Other area games — Paulding County at Northwest Whitfield, Allatoona at Murray County and Southeast at Cedartown — will kick off at the same time.

Despite knowing that, win or lose, their season is guaranteed to last at least one more week, the Cats aren’t going to go into the game feeling any less of a sense of urgency than last year, Dalton coach Adam Winegarden said.

“It’s a good feeling to know we’re in the playoffs,” he said. “But we want to win the region. No one here is satisfied. I think the team is very deserving to be in this game because they’ve worked so hard since January. They’ve earned the right to go fight and give everything they have.”

While the Cats have played for region titles before — according to the Georgia High School Football Historians Association, they have 21 to their credit, including six since 1990 — this experience is brand new for the Hornets, who began playing football in 2000.

“I try to explain to our kids that this is new territory for us,” Hornets coach Andy Dorsey said. “We’ve never been in this position before and Dalton has a rich tradition. No one gave us a chance when the season started. Some picked us to be the second worst team in our sub-region.

“But we’ve been proving people wrong each week and tonight will be exciting. It’s a neat environment in Dalton and it should be fun.”

Even if Hiram doesn’t win another game this season, the Hornets have already set a program record for wins in a season. The Hornets won eight games in 2002 and seven games in 2001 and 2006 for their only other winning seasons.

But Dorsey’s in no mood to reflect.

“We’ll worry about that when banquet time comes,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t even thought about all that stuff. We’ve still got to get ready for the next guy. We want to go as far as we can possibly go and hopefully win the state championship. That’s my goal as a head coach — to win a region and state championship. I’ll worry about everything else when the season ends.”

If the Cats are going to win tonight, offensive lineman Watts Dantzler knows it won’t be easy.

“Hiram is great,” he said. “Their defense is probably the fastest I’ve seen on film so far. They’re not big, but they’re extremely fast and quick. They have a lot of athletes, so we’ll definitely have to be ready for them.”

Both Hiram and Dalton are ranked in the Class 4A top 10 polls from The Associated Press, GaSports.com and Georgia High School Football Daily. The Hornets are No. 5 in all three polls, while the Cats are ninth in the GaSports.com coaches poll and 10th in the other two.



Paulding County

at NW Whitfield



Last season Northwest (6-3) was eliminated from the race for a state playoff spot in the next-to-last week of the regular season with a 20-7 loss to Dalton. But tonight in Tunnel Hill, if the Bruins can beat Paulding County (4-5), they’ll return to the Class 4A state playoffs for the first time since 2007, when they advanced to the second round.

Bruins coach Mike Falleur believes playing in front of a home crowd gives his team momentum before the game even starts.

“I think any time you get to play at home and don’t have to get on a bus and drive for two hours it’s a big advantage,” he said. “We’re glad to be at home and not going anywhere. Looking at film, (Paulding County’s) field is in terrible shape because during all the rain they were stuck at home playing games. Our field isn’t torn up as much because we were on the road when it rained, so I think that helps.”

The Bruins are trying to shake off last week’s loss to Dalton, which cost them the chance to clinch a state playoff berth and play for the region title. But Falleur believes his team has had ample time to recover from the disappointment.

“Obviously last Friday was tough and it took a couple of days to get over it,” he said. “But we can still get to 7-3 and make it to the state playoffs, which is exciting for our kids.”

Falleur said the key for a Bruins win will be stopping the Patriots’ running game. In video of three games, Paulding “pretty much just ran the ball against everyone,” Falleur said. He characterized their running backs as “very fast” and said it’s important the defenders are where they’re supposed to be to tackle them before they get going.

Paulding’s defense lines up in a 4-4-3 and loves to blitz — which could be good for the Bruins’ run-oriented spread offense.

“As long as we pick (the blitz) up and let (our runners) go untouched,” Falleur said. “We’ve done a pretty good job of blocking this year.”

Bruins senior offensive lineman Aaron Teasley said the team is looking to bounce back from last week’s loss and come out with a win.

“We’re going to go out there and try and take care of business,” he said. “We’re going to leave everything on the field.”

Southeast at Cedartown

Southeast and Cedartown are a long way from a Region 6-3A championship matchup, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to play for in tonight’s region crossover game at Doc Ayers Stadium in Cedartown.

With a victory, the Raiders (4-5) of Sub-region 6A-3A can finish at .500 for the first time since 1992. That would be another step on the improvement ladder in 2009 that coach David Crane can build on for the future.

“That’s what we’ve got to play for,” said Crane, who is well aware the Raiders haven’t had a winning season since 1986, when they were 6-5 under coach Tony Martin. “We’re pushing that. We’ve talked about teams across the state who are no longer in contention for the playoffs. They’re either playing the season out or they’ve got something else to play for. We’ve got something to play for. It’s a big game for us.”

Crane said Cedartown (2-7), a Sub-region 6B-3A team that has lost seven of its past eight games, presents several problems for the Raiders.

“They’ve got some quality athletes,” Crane said. “They run a double-slot offense, a lot like Georgia Southern used for a long time, and it’s tough to defend. They’ll dive that fullback in there and run a post rocket sweep and a counter off that. We won’t see a lot of formations from them, but they’ll execute that offense pretty well.”

The Bulldogs are coming off a 56-12 loss to Carrollton and are the only opponent this season to score in double figures against the Trojans, a top-10 ranked team.

Cedartown rushed for 225 yards against Carrollton, including 77- and 60-yard touchdown runs by Brooklyn Cotton and Zach Chubb. Cotton finished with 107 yards rushing on seven carries. Chubb had 65 yards on two carries.

Had Southeast defeated Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe last week rather than lose 17-14, it would have been playing for a state playoff berth. But that didn’t happen and instead the Raiders will be trying to beat Cedartown and reach break-even territory.

To reach that plateau, Southeast has to get solid games from quarterback Tanner McCutchen, running back Coty Burch, receivers Jeremy Bishop and David Rayborn and a tenacious performance from the Tanner Phipps-led defense.

“Cedartown has some good athletes,” said McCutchen, the area’s leading passer with 1,165 yards on 95 of 189 attempts. “It’s going to be a four-quarter war and the team that wins is going to be the team that outhits the other.

“I think we can do it. All the guys think we can do it. We have to play very hard to do that.”

Allatoona at Murray County

The last time the Murray County Indians saw Allatoona was on Nov. 7, 2008, when the Buccaneers won 40-21 and pushed them into a nine-loss season after they’d beaten East Hall 17-13 to open the year.

Flash forward 364 days.

It’s the same situation, only the season-ending scene has shifted from Acworth to Chatsworth. Murray County comes into tonight’s game against Allatoona (4-5) at 1-8, the lone win again over East Hall in the Aug. 22 opener. Since then the Indians have dropped eight consecutive games, including a 56-0 loss to Sequoyah last week.

The Indians will try to draw some emotion off the fact that it’s senior night at Murray Field.

“I would like to get a win in this game,” Indians senior center Angel Langley said. “That would be a good feeling. I’ve been playing football since I was 8, but this is probably it for me. I’m just going to be a student in college somewhere after this.”

A win won’t come easy for the Indians, who have struggled to score points and stop opposing teams from scoring in bunches.

“They handled us pretty good last year,” Indians coach John Zeigler said. “On tapes we’ve seen them play North Paulding and North Cobb Christian and they’ve played well. They use that slot I offense with a slotback on one side with a split end and a tight end on the other side and the quarterback under center, a lot like we ran early in the season.”

Zeigler said the Indians have to eliminate, or cut down, their mistakes.

“You just cannot do that and win,” Zeigler said. “We have to execute in the spread offense. A lot of people think the spread offense will get you a lot of points. It won’t unless you execute plays from the spread. It doesn’t score points on its own.”

Allatoona coach Gary Varner calls tonight’s game big for his second-year Bucs, who have played a non-region schedule to this point but went into each of their first two seasons knowing their 10th game would be against the team at the bottom of the Sub-region 7A-4A standings.

A win tonight would help make the offseason a little easier to take for the Bucs, who have won three of their past four games.

“I think this game might be a springboard to next year, a measuring stick to see if we’re on the right track,” Varner said. “Next year we’ll play a region schedule for the first time and we hope to end 2008 on a good note.”



The Daily Citizen sports editor Larry Fleming contributed to this story.