Kennesaw Mountain had been the surprise of Class 6A during the first seven weeks of the high school football season, but the Mustangs got a surprise of their own Friday night, and it wasn’t a pleasant one.
Kennesaw Mountain, seemingly closing in on the first football region title in the 22-year history of the school, instead hit its first bump in the road, losing 17-15 to a South Cobb team that had been in last place in the nine-team region.
Kennesaw Mountain came into the game 6-0 overall and ranked No. 4 in Class 4A, both firsts in program history, and were in first place with a 4-0 record in Region 6 play.
South Cobb entered the weekend on a five-game losing streak, with no loss closer than 15 points, and was 1-5 overall and 0-4 in the region. The computer Maxwell Ratings had projected the Eagles as 40-point underdogs.
South Cobb’s Alberto Bibian kicked the go-ahead 37-yard field goal with 1:12 remaining, and the Eagles clinched the victory with an interception in the final minute. The win was South Cobb’s first over a top-10 team since beating North Cobb in 2012 and its third in 40 years.
“I’m so proud of our kids, and I’m so proud of our staff, and I’m proud of the school,” first-year South Cobb coach Thomas Hanson told Stephen Black for the Marietta Daily Journal. “A lot of people had given up on us even this season. We didn’t have a very good week of practice, but they came out and played their tails off tonight. It couldn’t have ended better.”
Kennesaw Mountain’s loss left Pope as the only unbeaten team in Region 6 play. The Greyhounds took care of Wheeler 35-7 Friday and improved to 5-1 overall and 4-0 in the region. Pope travels to Kennesaw Mountain next week.
The only other Class 6A top-10 team to lose in Week 8 was No. 7 Douglas County, which fell to South Paulding 28-6. Although the Spartans’ victory wasn’t as big of an upset as South Cobb’s (South Paulding was a 13-point underdog, according to Maxwell), it was significant, nonetheless.
The loss was Douglas County’s first of the season, and it dropped the Tigers into a five-way tie for first place in Region 5 with South Paulding, Carrollton, Rome and Alexander, all of which are 3-1 in region play. All five teams have next weekend off, leaving them three weeks to determine which four will make the playoffs. The region’s other three teams, Paulding County, East Paulding and Dalton, are a combined 0-10 in region play.
Elsewhere, another surprise team in Class 6A continued its winning ways. No. 10 Cambridge improved to 5-0 overall and 3-0 in Region 7 with a 28-0 win over Sequoyah. The victory moved Cambridge into a first-place tie with Johns Creek, and those teams will meet at Johns Creek next week with sole possession of first place on the line.
Cambridge and Johns Creek are two of the nine Class 6A teams that have played at least two region games and remain undefeated. The others are No. 5 Brunswick in Region 2, No. 3 Hughes and Lovejoy in Region 4, Pope in Region 6, and Dacula, No. 1 Buford and Shiloh in Region 8.
The six teams in Region 3 have each played just one region game, and four-team Region 1 begins league play next week.
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