The Region 8-AAAAA championship in 2014 ultimately was decided by the Lanier-Gainesville game, and that’s likely to be the case again this season.
Lanier beat the Red Elephants 26-23 last year on a 41-yard field goal by Mason Harwood with 14.7 seconds remaining. Lanier led 23-9 with less than 11 minutes to play, but Gainesville rallied to tie it 23-23 with 3:33 left.
Lanier went on to a 10-0 regular season and claimed the program’s first region title in its third full season of varsity competition. The loss was the only one in region play for Gainesville, which finished a game back in second place.
“It was a big win,” Lanier coach Korey Mobbs told the Gwinnett Daily Post after last year’s game. “To play a traditional power like Gainesville and go toe to toe, and really lead the entire game. People will tell you we probably should have put them away and we didn’t, and they battled back like any class program would. But to see how we responded to that, driving down field and hitting a 41-yard field goal with 14 seconds left was huge for our team and our community.”
The Longhorns (5-0, 4-0) and Red Elephants (4-1, 4-0) meet again on Friday in Gainesville, and again they are the only teams that are unbeaten in region play. Both teams will be heavy favorites in their remaining games, so this one should determine the champion.
Here are some of the other top games involving Class AAAAA teams this weekend:
- South Effingham (5-0, 3-0) at Coffee (5-1, 3-1), 7:30 p.m. Friday: South Effingham is 5-0 for the first time since 2008, but to remain tied with Ware County atop the 3-AAAAA standings it will need to knock off a team that has lost just two regular-season games in two seasons (both against Ware County). Glynn Academy will meet Ware in another matchup of the region's top teams.
- Stockbridge (5-0, 1-0) at Luella (2-3, 0-1) , 7:30 p.m. Friday: Stockbridge is projected as a 32-point favorite by the computer Maxwell Ratings, but the Tigers were 16-point favorites last season when they were upset by Luella 7-6. Stockbridge scored the potential tying touchdown with 6:24 to play but missed the extra point. It was the only region loss for the 4-AAAAA champion Tigers.
- Carver-Atlanta (5-1, 1-0) at Creekside (4-2, 0-1), 7:30 p.m. Friday: Creekside's chances of repeating as 6-AAAAA champion took a serious blow with a 41-21 loss to Mays last week, and another loss will end any hope of returning to the region championship game. Carver, Creekside and Mays finished in a tie for first place in the subregion last season, with Creekside winning the tiebreakers.
- Rome (3-2, 1-1) at Dalton (4-2, 2-1), 7:30 p.m. Friday: Six of the seven teams in Region 7-AAAAA Div. A have one loss heading into the weekend. All will play each other on Friday, but this is the marquee matchup of the bunch. Rome has the more difficult schedule remaining, but regardless of who wins there's a good chance the subregion title will be determined through tiebreakers.
