Georgia High School Football Daily Spotlight: RivalsHigh 100 moves Grayson to No. 2
Grayson and Newnan made big splashes Tuesday in the national rankings.
Grayson, Georgia’s No. 1-ranked team in Class AAAAA, is positioned for a possible national championship as it made an unexpected jump to No. 2 from No. 6 in the RivalsHigh 100, compiled by Dallas Jackson.
Grayson leaped four teams that won last week – Don Bosco Prep of Ramsey, N.J.; Byrnes of Duncan, S.C.; Skyline of Dallas; and DeMatha of Hyattsville, Md. The No. 1 team is St. Thomas Aquinas of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
“The thought was that New Jersey is very down this season, and so Don Bosco – despite the wins over Prattville and DLS – should not be the No. 2 team,” Jackson said. “Byrnes has two ‘test games’ on their schedule. One they lost to Aquinas; the other against Dorman was an unimpressive win. Texas’ best team will probably end the season above whomever wins Georgia unless they do it impressively, and right now there isn’t a clear No. 1 in Texas so I can’t justify a No. 2 team [Skyline of Dallas] from a situation I don’t feel good about. DeMatha [of Maryland] could take that No. 2 spot eventually, but when we saw them against good counsel, they looked good but not great.”
RivalsHigh has seven Georgia teams ranked.
“There are just so many good teams in [Georgia] at the top level, and the depth is there,” Jackson said. “It is pretty easy to see a handful of good teams from the highest level, but when the state has true depth you can find elite teams in the lower classes, and Georgia has both.”
Newnan, previously unranked, landed at No. 67 after posting its fifth shutout of the season in a 26-0 victory over Pebblebrook. It was Newnan’s 13th shutout in two seasons.
Here is a look at Georgia teams in the various national rankings:
ESPN Fab 50
14. Grayson; 35. Northside (+1); 44. Lowndes
*Massey
16. Lowndes (-4)
*MaxPreps Freeman Rankings
18. Northside
MaxPreps Xcellent 25
11. Grayson (+3); 24. Northside
National Prep Poll
9. Grayson; 14. Northside
RivalsHigh 100
2. Grayson (+4); 16. Northside (+3); 25. Lowndes (+3); 45. North Gwinnett (+2); 67. Newnan (un); 69. Gainesville; 79. Stephenson (+2)
USA Today
14. Grayson (+1); 22. Lowndes (+2)
*Computer rankings
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69 comments Add your comment
EagleNationRising
October 29th, 2009
12:39 am
Jcwfalcon: I see the game being close early and then Northside pulling away late in the 2nd quarter or into the 3rd quarter. The Eagles have too many weapons. Furthermore, Martin Van Brunt is a SIGNIFICANT improvement at quarterback. He lacks experience and some skill set pieces. However, he is a very good quarterback in the spread system.
I believe Warner Robins is going to struggle with the spread offense. I expect Van Brunt to be the difference. The Demons simply can not score. They have blown long drives in big games with turnovers (against Grayson, Valdosta, and Colquitt County). I expect Northside young defense to get a score or two. I also expect Northside to make a scoring play in the special teams. I will be nervous all the way, until Northside scores more than 14 points. I do not believe that Warner Robins can score twice against Northside. It may be a close one. However, I think Northside pulls away during the middle of the game at some point.
Northside 31, Warner Robins 7.
EagleNationRising
October 29th, 2009
12:52 am
68 Viking: The truth is both programs are going to have to make a run to the State Championship game to play one another. Either way, that is a tall order. I know that you guys have your fingers crossed that Northside will lose and Lowndes somehow wins the region. IT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. Northside plays at McConnell-Talbert Stadium for the remainder of the regular season. Say what you want about Northside playing out of their minds. It was a sound beating and Nix was so superior from a coaching standpoint, it was not even close.
Camden County is going to get respected in the second round. Trust me. Any south Georgia school can lose the toss in the third round and face a challenging 3-6 hour bus ride for a road game. The same in the case for a potential 4th round (semifinal) clash.
68 Viking: We all love our Region 1-AAAAA football south of the Gnat line. I will continue to tease metro Atlanta programs. However, McEachern is every bit as athletic as Northside or Lowndes…if not more athletic – MUCH MORE athletic. Grayson is arguably better, especially at home. Stephenson is MORE athletic. NO DOUNT. Mike O’Brien has Woodstock rolling. The question will be how to these Atlanta kids respond to getting hit. If they can take the hits from our programs, they are going to compete. I guarantee you. I was blown away when I saw McEachern.
AVikingFan
October 29th, 2009
9:32 am
ENR I agree with what you said in the last post or two. Northside will NOT lose either of the next two games in my opinion. I am making my reservations to spend the night in St. Marys, GA the 2nd playoff game. That’s a long drive back home, win or lose. (I also expect us to play in the 3rd playoff round.) Hopefully Randy Mac can find a way to inspire Lowndes to play a little better on the road than we have in the past. In other posts you’ve mentioned how we’ve looked bad in road games to GrAyson, the MAC, etc. Look at Tifton in 2008. Without Greg Reid’s heroics we would have lost that game. The same as with Harrison in 06. Greg Reid as a sophomore practically won that game for us by himself. The 10-0 win over Camden in the 07 semis should have been like the 05 semis, a 30-0 blowout. The 14-0 win over Stephenson in the 05 semis should have been a blowout like the 04 win over Stephenson at Lowndes. But, the fact remains, Lowndes won most of those road games and in the process won 3 AAAAA titles, something Northside has not done YET. Maybe this is your year! Hopefully NS will decide to play “up” in the next realignemnt and stay in 1-AAAAA. Their presence is good for our region.
grayram
October 29th, 2009
9:56 am
Greg Reid was a special player. I hope if we play Lowndes again you don’t have another one like him.
grayram
October 29th, 2009
10:13 am
Found these video highlights of Buford destroying a mediocre team from Ohio
http://rivals.yahoo.com/video/recruiting-football/Buford-vs-Grove-City-29916
grayram
October 29th, 2009
10:23 am
here they are again beating Mansfield Texas fairly easily.
http://www.maxpreps.com/FanPages/maxprepstv.mxp/videoid-b6e48926-c182-47c2-9d9c-f7c5438b2e9c
grayram
October 29th, 2009
10:33 am
BTW Mansfield Timberview is a 4A school in Texas (Buford 2A)
BulldawgBite
October 30th, 2009
3:23 pm
grayram, hopefully grayson can play in some big out of state games soon. it seems like their national cred is really rising. always good to see ga teams represent
tommy
October 30th, 2009
4:40 pm
yea candem played 2 teams from out of state one bein hoover and a top team in fla. i beleave lownes played a team from fla to. includin a game on espnu. well was not realy a game. as far as play offs the teams need to take it one game at a time. lookin a head could be a trip to the house. ive seen teams all over play. and one thing i know is some times in high school with all these teams that have a run a spread are dangerous. 1 aaaaa is a very tough region. 5 of those teams deserve a shot in play offs. my team bein candem county well team i pull for. has a week region but make up for it wid our non region schedule. we have bigger boys than lownes and north side. i seen both play. but with all great teams in aaaaa ball its gonna be great to see these games wish all were on tv.
tommy
October 30th, 2009
4:42 pm
bull dawg seen them play in season opener grayson is a stout club. but your right ga has 5 schools in top 100. go ga high schools.
BulldawgBite
October 30th, 2009
7:50 pm
im with ya tommy. any team that makes the quarterfinals has a legitmate shot at winning the state championship this year. you can find on maxpreps they say this year is one of GAs strongest in high school football in a while
Kenneth Sauls
October 31st, 2009
9:18 pm
Everyones comments have been good. I have been a Lowndes Viking(PLOWBOY)for 40years. We have taken our beatings gracefully. I never want to win a game when the refs try to look good and I sure hate to loose because of the refs. As long as the kids are playing fair and are not getting out of line with personal fouls, they should be aloud to play football. We are not playing touch or flag fooseball, we are playing hard nose football. What makes me so proud of lowndes is the excel in most all the sports and they have the number 1 high school band in the nation(the Georgia Bridgemen).I would definately like one more shot at Grayson on a field that holds more then 6000 fans. If a team can’t put more than 10,000 fans in the stadium, they shoud not be aloud to host a playoff. Go Vikings and good luck to all the South Georgia football teams in every class in region 1.
CGHS Student
November 1st, 2009
1:05 am
Anyone can be Meadowcreek, Central Gwinnett beat them 34-0 Friday night and we have only won two games. I know we will loose to Grayson next week, but I have to keep hope. lol.
CGHS Student
November 1st, 2009
1:08 am
beat*
Fred
November 2nd, 2009
12:40 am
@Kenneth Sauls said “I would definately like one more shot at Grayson on a field that holds more then 6000 fans.” For what it is worth, it is not 10K in seating but Grayson Community Stadium seats 8,521 and can easily accomodate another 2K+ is standing room in a pinch. Every though it was cold and rainy, I well remember how y’all filled the stands for that playoff game. The county does not support the stadiums, at least not in the beginning. They have been know to assume some debt once things are built and the program has shown they can support the debt. Check out http://www.graysonramsfootball.com/index.php?page=stadium for more information on how far the program has come in 10 years. Not too shabby if I do say so.
I have been told that the only thing the county funded was the light towers and lights. I don’t know how accurate that info is so take it with a grain of salt. Gwinnett has 17 high schools and the capital requirements to set up 10K seating stadiums are so great it is just not going to happen.
I know everyone talks about the “rich” metro school systems. Here is an interesting statistic for you (and yes, we all know about statistics
) – there are approximately 1.6 million students in the state. Gwinnett has 160,000 or 10% of the state’s students. I find that to be an amazing number! The other issue for Gwinnett is they support so many more sports than football. I know other systems do as well and I certainly don’t mean to nor am I trying to belittle other systems. As an example, lacrosse is now getting a strong foothold and I might be willing to bet that many of the other systems in GA don’t support lacrosse. I could be wrong and again am not trying to talk down to other systems.
The other amazing thing for me is that the demographics have changed so much in Gwinnett. The system is majority minority now with a large number of cultures where American style football is not strong. Soccer is big as are other sports. I am somewhat amazed that we continue to field competitive teams in football the way we have! This could be Meadowcreek’s problem with football but that is pure specualtion on my part. I know they field competitive teams in other sports and do well academically, just not in football.
Growth continues to cause redistricting as new schools continue to open. Archer was opened this year with the majority of students coming from Grayson. Due to the way the growth occurs, there are some really screwy attendance zones. As an example, I live about 2.5 miles from South Gwinnett, 5 miles from Brookwood and about 6.5-7 miles from Grayson. My child goes to Grayson while some neighborhoods only a couple of miles from Grayson got moved to Archer. Reading some of the other posts on other blogs, I think I see where a new high school is scheduled to open in Warner Robbins soon and they are concerned about the impact on the football programs and the stadiums. Imagine going through that every 2-3 years! It make for some interesting times, let me tell you!
Fred
November 2nd, 2009
12:54 am
Oops, I lied! It is 8,021 seats at Grayson Community Stadium not 8,521. I looked at the number at the top of the web page and accepted it. When I went back and added it all up, I came up with the lower number. I don’t know if the 500 descrepancy is from taking into account the press boxes, consession workers, ticket takers, etc or where that number comes from. As Maxwell Smart might say, “Sorry about that Chief!”
DA Nut
November 3rd, 2009
10:21 am
How ’bout Gainesville HS as the class 3-A team at a minimum? They already have 4 players committed to either SEC, PAC 10 and Notre Dame. Speed is amazing; pass or run the offense is explosive.
Newton Co.
November 3rd, 2009
3:53 pm
grayram, Newton would be 2nd in your region this year. Don’t kid yourself, your region blows. Outside of you guys and South, who could beat us? You aint seen us play I understand. Keep living in the past like the rest of the bloggers. It only gets better at Newton, JR and SOPH dominated team with 3 middle schools feeding us in a 3 horse town, with 3 three playoff teams in 3 different classifications. Much respect to Grayson though; yall prove me wrong a get to the Dome again. Playing against Camden Co. first round, it don’t take a rocket scientist to figure out we are in trouble.
ronniebug
November 7th, 2009
6:23 pm
@fred I agree with kenneth about the stadiums. The game should have been played at Lowndes and the GHSA , Grayson, and Lowndes would have doubled their profits from the tickets sold. When Lowndes and Valdosta meets we put 13,000 to 16,000 fans in the stadium. That is South Georgia high school football.