Lots of games to be looking at and talking about tonight, and we might as well be recognizing that we are talking about these games on early Saturday morning…
The nature of our Friday night football games was a bit odd in some ways…It looked like Grimsley was wearing Page out in the first half, but Page fought hard and made a game of it and that final score, Grimsley 27, Page 22, was much closer than most people thought it would be…On the video we watched, the Whirlies Ryan Stephens was racking up passing yardage to Terrell Anderson and Alex Taylor in the opening half…Stephens also running the ball well too..Must have been some big time adjustments by Page during the halftime break…Page was getting a solid and successful effort in the first half, from the QB Jerron Blackwell, based upon the video footage we were watching…
I thought the Northwest Guilford-Southeast Guilford game would be much closer than the NWG 37, SEG 10 final showed…SEG cut the lead to 6-3 on a 21-yard field goal by Aidan Bonde in the first half…SEG had the ball down around the NWG four-yard line, but the Falcons were turned back, and ended up settling for the field by Bonde..If SEG could have got the TD they were looking for at 4-yard line, the score would have been 7-6 SEG, because we all know that Aidan Bonde would have connected on that PAT kick…
SEG was down 22-10 and the Falcons had the ball on their opening drive of the second half…The Falcons had taken the opening kickoff of half number two, and they drove the ball down to the NWG 11-yard line, but SEG’s QB Bryson Serrano had his pass picked off by the NWG Vikings’ Ryan Debow, and that shut the door on the SEG Falcons drive that could have led to a touchdown, and the NWG lead would have been cut to, just 22-17 Vikings…It would have been just a five-difference there, but Northwest turned Southeast away again…SEG had shots all night long, but NWG would never let SEG gain an upper advantage…
NWG got a monster performance from their senior running back, Mike Godette…Godette was running for at least 250 yards in this game, and was for sure, our Steak n Shake Offensive Player of the Game…We went with Ryan Debow as our Steak n Shake Defensive Player of the Game, from the NWG victory over SEG…Godette has become one of the top running backs in Guilford County, and if he ran every night like he ran tonight/Friday night, Mike Godette would be a First Team All-State running back…The kid runs low to the ground, and he is hard to bring down…Godette is usually going to be good for 3-4 yards per carry just staying low and hitting his holes with authority…
Mike Godette was running like a man possessed on Friday night, at Southeast Guilford…The SEG Falcons were maybe thinking we slowed down part of the NWG passing game, but here comes #1 Mike Godette running like the number one running back, in Guilford County….And NWG QB Tanner Ballou ran for a touchdown, on a quarterback keeper, plus Stewart Spagnola crossed the goal line on a 10-yard TD run for Northwest…Seven TD passes by NWG’s Tanner Ballou last week, and this week, Northwest comes back and executes their running game to near-perfection…
(Godette now with 319 rushing yards on 30 carries, plus two receptions good for 52 more yards and one Touchdown…Total Yards for Godette at 371 yards…QB Tanner Ballou was 8-19 passing for 238 yards and 2 TD’s/2 INT., plus Tanner Ballou had a rushing TD for NWG…Godette and Ballou combined for right at 557 yards of running/passing Total Offense.)
Northwest is going to be tough out for some heavily favored team in the NCHSAA playoffs….And working in/on more running, SEG’s Cam Williams had what might have been the Play/Run of the Game, when he took off from the SEG 14-yard line and he didn’t stop running until he was standing in the back of the NWG Vikings end zone, some 86 yards away…Williams with an 86-yard TD run for the SEG Falcons…Need to get the ball in that young man hands more often, and he did have/make some nice receptions in this game too, but the more touches Williams gets, the better chance the SEG Falcons have to come out as winners…
Tonight/Friday night, Northwest Guilford came into the Bill Slayton Stadium, ready to make a statement, and the Vikings did just that…Again, NWG will be a tough out in the NCHSAA Playoffs, no matter who they are facing…
Other games/more games that got our attention on Friday night…Western Guilford lost another close one, this time falling to Northern Guilford, 9-6…WG lost to Page a few backs, 10-7…..I did not expect the WG-NG game to be this close, even though Northern has been missing their QB Jack Mercer and their TE Vance Bolyard for several weeks now…
Another game that got us in the surprise department, was Northeast Guilford falling to Rockingham County, 40-27…I felt for sure that NEG would pick up their sixth win of the season, vs. The ROCK…The ROCK laid a pretty heavy beating/beat down on the Rams…
One more sort of a surprise was the Southwest Guilford Cowboys’ 13-7 win over Ragsdale…Had the feeling going in, that SWG could win this game by as many as three touchdowns…Big rival game with the Tigers and C’boys and the final score showed that/proved that out tonight…
Dudley rolled over Southern Guilford, and Eastern Guilford flew past Smith…Dudley a 50-0 winner, and EG takes their game, 63-14…Eastern at Dudley next Friday night for the Conference Championship…And do they call this conference the Mid-State 3-A, or the Piedmont Triad 3-A Conference???
This gives us the perfect segue to the next part of our Friday Night Finish…Let’s go ahead and look at the local standings, and at the same, take a peek at next weeks games…
Our look at the Metro 4-A Conference….
Grimsley(9-0/6-0)
Northwest Guilford(7-2/5-1)
Page(5-4/4-2)
Southeast Guilford(6-3/3-3)
Southwest Guilford(5-4/3-3)
Northern Guilford(4-5/2-4)
Ragsdale(1-8/1-5)
Western Guilford(0-9/0-6)
(Next Week:Northern Guilford at Grimsley, Southwest Guilford at Northwest Guilford, Southeast Guilford at Page, Western Guilford at Ragsdale.)
Mid-State 3-A Conference…
Dudley(7-2/6-0)
Eastern Guilford(6-3/5-0)
Southern Guilford(6-3/4-2)
Northeast Guilford(5-3/2-4)
Smith(2-7/2-4)
High Point Central(1-8/1-5)
(Next Week:Eastern Guilford at Dudley for the Conference Championship, High Point Central at Southern Guilford, Smith at Northeast Guilford.)
2-A Conference:
High Point Andrews(4-5/1-4)
(Next Week:Thursday you have Walkertown(7-2/4-1) at High Point Andrews.)
Let’s look at the scoring rundown from the Northwest Guilford at Southeast Guilford game….
8:36 First Quarter NWG’s QB Tanner Ballou takes off on a 7-yard touchdown run…The two-point run fails…
Northwest Guilford 6, Southeast Guilford 0
3:33 First Quarter SEG gets a 21-yard Field Goal from their kicker, Aidan Bonde…
NWG 6, SEG 3
1:55 First Quarter NWG goes long with a 59-yard TD pass from Ballou to Bristol Carter…Ballou good on his two-point conversion pass to Prince Brown…
Northwest Guilford 14, Southeast Guilford 3
End of First Quarter:NWG 14, SEG 3
11:18 Second Quarter Mike Godette takes off on a 55-yard TD run for NWG..Godette is also good on the two-point conversion run….
NWG 22, SEG 3
45.3 Seconds left in the Second Quarter Cam Williams goes to the house on an 86-yard TD run for SEG…The Bonde PAT kick is good…
NWG 22, SEG 10
Halftime:Northwest Guilford 22, Southeast Guilford 10
1:37 Third Quarter Stewart Spagnola takes off on a 10-yard TD run for NWG…The two-point run by Prince Brown is good…
NWG 30, SEG 10
End of Third Quarter:Northwest Guilford 30, Southeast Guilford 10
6:10 Fourth Quarter Ballou with a 29-yard TD pass to Trent Cloud…PAT kick from Nate Wallace is good…
NWG 37, SEG 10
Final Score:Northwest Guilford 37, Southeast Guilford 10
A couple of Final Notes on the Friday Football Finish:
High Point Central losing to WS Atkins 12-8 last night, really cuts to the heart, as I was so close to going (10-0) on the picks for this week, but in the end, NEG and HP Central left me at the door, still waiting and wanting to get in on the Perfect Score for this season…
One more quick and final note…NWG at SEG got me thinking back to a game with the Vikings and the Falcons, back in the 1980’s…On that night, Rusty LaRue came in for Mike Green at QB for NWG, and that was Rusty’s first game action, as Northwest Guilford’s quarterback…Coach Charlie Groves would not let Rusty start the season at his top QB, since Rusty had missed football practice time, while playing Summer Baseball…This game was maybe the third game of the regular season, and Rusty had to wait his turn, before Coach Groves would turn the full-time reins over to him…Mike Green went on to become a punter at either North Carolina, or Wake Forest, and Rusty LaRue went on to have a stellar career as the top quarterback, for the Wake Forest Demon Deacons…Mike Green, Rusty LaRue, Will Berry, Matt Pawlowski, Micah Salmon, and now Tanner Ballou, some very solid QB’s at NWG, over the years….
In the SWG game they were flat. It also didn’t help that they did that thing where the offense was rolling with one QB and then they changed it up all of a sudden and put in the other guy. It kept throwing everything off. This is going to lose SWG some strong kids that should return next year to other programs. Play calling was suspect as well. It also didn’t help that 1 of their best tacklers is hurt and one of their best rushers are done for the year.