GHSF Daily’s Chip Saye ranks the most surprising and notable games of the weekend:
1. Macon County 21, Clinch County 19: Clinch County, projected as a 24-point favorite by the computer Maxwell Ratings, lost a regular-season game against a Class A school other than Irwin County for the first time since 2014 (Charlton County 23-19). Clinch is now 0-6 all-time against Macon County, although the teams hadn’t met since 1996.
2. Bulloch Academy 32, Savannah Country Day 2: Savannah Country Day, ranked No. 9 in Class A Private last week, was upset by a GISA school that was projected as a double-digit underdog. Bulloch Academy’s first-year coach is Steve Pennington, who has 205 career victories and led Statesboro to a state championship in 2005.
3. Class 4A top 10 goes 0-5: No. 9 Mays’ game against West Forsyth was projected by Maxwell as a tossup, but the Raiders lost 42-6. No. 10 North Oconee was a 10-point underdog against Oconee County but lost 27-7. No. 4 West Laurens (lost 27-19 vs. Bleckley County), No. 5 Flowery Branch (38-28 vs. St. Pius) and No. 6 Troup (28-14 vs. Harris County) had been projected to win.
4. Fannin County 24, Union County 20: Union County’s 16 consecutive season-opening victories, the state’s longest active streak, ended with a loss to a Fannin County team that was a 12-point underdog. Fannin County had lost six straight games in the series, including 33-14 last year, with only one of the games decided by fewer than 19 points.
5. Wheeler County 26, Telfair County 10: Wheeler County was the biggest underdog to win in Week 1, beating 37-point favorite Telfair County. It was a dramatic reversal from last season, when Telfair won 44-7. Wheeler County had lost six consecutive games in the series, all by at least 14 points, and scored just 19 points total in the past three meetings.
Worth noting: Armuchee broke a 10-game losing streak with a 10-7 victory over five-point favorite Towns County in a battle of teams that finished 0-10 last season. Both are Class A Public schools, although Armuchee played in 2A in 2019. … Cass beat 15-point favorite Dawson County 23-7 for its first victory over a top-10 opponent since 1983. The game was the head coaching debut for Cass’s Steve Gates, formerly a Kell assistant. Dawson County was No. 10 in Class 3A last week. … Glascock County won a season-opening game for the first time since 2001 and recorded the largest margin of victory in program history when it beat the Georgia School for Innovation and the Classics 58-0. GSIC, playing its first GHSA season, is a charter school in Hephzibah that opened in 2015. … Lambert ended a school-record 16-game losing streak with a 34-9 victory over Campbell in Tommy Watson’s debut as head coach. Watson is a former Lowndes assistant and Upson-Lee head coach. Campbell has lost 20 straight. … Richmond Hill, coming off the first semifinal appearance in program history, continued the momentum with a 28-11 victory over 14-point favorite Camden County, ranked No. 6 in Class 7A last week.
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