In the end, it was all Cedar Grove in what became an all-Region 5 championship game.
The Saints won the program’s fourth state football championship in six seasons with a 56-26 victory against Carver-Atlanta. It was the first championship under head coach John Adams, who took over this season after Miguel Patrick’s departure to Crisp County.
Cedar Grove finished the regular season 7-3, with a 45-30 loss to Sandy Creek in the final regular season game that forced a points-differential three-way tie with Carver-Atlanta, Sandy Creek and the Saints. Cedar Grove won the tiebreaker and entered the playoffs as the No. 1 seed.
Here’s a two-minute drill through the Class 3A season:
Surprises
I don’t know if anyone in the state picked Crisp County over No. 2 Oconee County and Peach County over top-ranked Monroe Area in the second round of the playoffs. But maybe Region 2 was underestimated. Peach and Crisp entered the playoffs unranked – Peach for the first time since 2015 – and sent the top two teams in the state packing. Peach beat Monroe Area 24-21, and Crisp defeated Oconee County 26-10.
On the rise
Carver-Atlanta should be proud. The Panthers hadn’t been to a championship game since 1967 under head coach Clarence Fisher and really hadn’t had any postseason success since then, other than a semifinal appearance in 1968 and a quarterfinal appearance in 1986. Darren Myles took over at Carver in 2005 and has led the Panthers to the playoffs in 13 of his 16 seasons, including quarterfinal appearances in 2007 and 2020, a semifinal appearance in 2015 and the title game this season, Myles’ first-ever championship appearance.
Computer confusion?
According to the Maxwell Season Summary, Oconee County and Appling County finished ahead of state runner-up Carver-Atlanta.
Here’s the explanation in computer-speak: “As this season’s games are played, the Maxwell Ratings will be based on a modified logistic regression of the current football season’s results in combination with each team’s historical performance. More recent games and games against similarly rated opponents carry more weight and the weight of each team’s historical performance diminishes as the team’s season progresses. The ratings are scaled so that there is a 50% chance in any given year of at least one team eclipsing a rating of 100.00. A hypothetical score at a neutral location can be calculated between two teams by adding their offensive and defensive ratings. To account for home advantage, adjust the hypothetical scores in favor of the home team by half of the home advantage. For the current season, the ratings accurately account for the winner of 2,226 of 2,427 total games including 2 tie(s) (91.72%) and accurately reflect approximately 68.3% of all game scores within 9.75 points and all game margins within 12.77 points.”
Get all of that?
2021 Region Champions
Region 1: Pierce County
Region 2: Crisp County
Region 3: Liberty County
Region 4: Thomson
Region 5: Cedar Grove
Region 6: Rockmart
Region 7: Cherokee Bluff
Region 8: Monroe Area
Note: Cherokee Bluff won its second consecutive and overall region title after completing its first-ever undefeated regular season. Cherokee Bluff was created in 2018 and went 0-10. The next season, Cherokee Bluff finished 3-7. Steadily rising, the Bears won the team’s first region title and earned its first playoff berth last season when it finished 10-2.
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