Region play is in full swing in four of the eight regions in Class AAAAAA, and no teams picked up more significant victories in the fifth week of the season than Dalton and South Paulding.
Dalton is one of the hottest teams in the state, and Catamounts running back Jahmyr Gibbs is most likely the hottest player. Gibbs rushed for 312 yards and six touchdowns Friday in Dalton’s 42-19 victory over defending Region 6-AAAAAA champion Creekview. Gibbs, who is committed to Georgia Tech, has rushed for 1,137 yards and scored 23 touchdowns in four games. He is on pace to run for more than 2,800 yards and score 57 touchdowns during the regular season.
Dalton led 21-19 entering the final quarter, but Gibbs scored his final three touchdowns to put the game away.
“The last one, I told coach to just give me the ball,” Gibbs told Patrick J. O’Shea of the Cherokee Tribune. “We kept running all this stuff we don’t normally run, and I said just run the ball and we’ll score. We ran it and we scored.”
The victory was the second straight for Dalton against a team that handed it one of its four losses in 2018, when the Catamounts finished 6-4 and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2010. The Catamounts get a chance for more revenge next weekend when they travel to Harrison, which won last year’s matchup 38-17. Dalton (4-0, 2-0), Harrison (5-0, 3-0) and Allatoona (3-1, 3-0) are the remaining unbeaten teams in Region 6 play.
In Region 5, South Paulding (3-1, 2-0) is tied for first place after a 27-19 victory over Douglas County, which was the runner-up in 2018. The Spartans are tied with defending region champion Creekside, and Mays can make it a three-way tie if it beats New Manchester Saturday.
South Paulding made three consecutive playoff appearances from 2013 to 2015 but was just 5-25 over the past three seasons. The Spartans lost their season opener this year, 43-32 against Class AAAAAAA North Paulding, but bounced back with three consecutive victories, including a 28-21 win against Alexander in the region opener. South Paulding plays Mays and Creekside in the final three weeks of the regular season.
Here are some of the other big stories in Class AAAAAA from Week 5:
*Region 4 update: Tucker beat Mundy's Mill 44-20 and moved into a tie for first with Lovejoy. Both are 2-0 in region play. Right behind them is surprising M.L. King (3-0, 1-0), which beat Mount Zion-Jonesboro 14-13. Mount Zion shook up the region last week with an upset of 2018 champ Stephenson. Mundy's Mill (2-3, 0-3), a playoff team last year, is tied for last place with Forest Park.
*Region 7 update: Northview and defending champ Johns Creek are tied for first place after both improved to 2-0. Northview, which finished in fifth place last year, handed Dunwoody (2-2, 1-1) its first region loss 23-7. Alpharetta (1-2, 1-0) is a half-game back after beating Pope 24-21. Centennial, the runner-up the past three years, is 0-4 overall (0-2 in the region) after losing to Cambridge 29-7.
*Letdown for Houston County: No. 5 Houston County climbed into the rankings for the first time since 2016 after beating AAA No. 1 Peach County last weekend, but the Bears came back to reality Friday, losing 7-2 to county rival Veterans. The Warhawks, a Class AAAAA team that improved to 4-1, came into the game projected as 15-point underdogs by the computer Maxwell Ratings.
*Unbeatens: Houston County and Lovejoy, which lost to Southwest DeKalb 26-14, fell from the ranks of the unbeaten, leaving eight teams in the classification without a loss. They are Coffee (5-0) and Valdosta (5-0) from Region 1, Lakeside-Evans (2-0) from Region 3, M.L. King (3-0) from Region 4, Harrison (5-0) and Dalton (4-0) from Region 6, and Dacula (4-0) and Lanier (4-0) from Region 8.
*Great Atlanta Bash: The Mays-New Manchester game at 3:20 p.m. will be part of a tripleheader being played Saturday at Georgia State Stadium featuring teams from Atlanta Public Schools. Other games include Class AA South Atlanta against Washington at 10 a.m. and Class AAAAA Carver against Maynard Jackson at 12:40 p.m. All games will be televised by Peachtree TV in Atlanta.
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