Maroon Tide hosts West Harrison for Homecoming
The Picayune Maroon Tide will be back at Lee-Triplett Stadium on Friday with a homecoming matchup against the West Harrison Hurricanes. Picayune was on the road for its last two games with a 37-7 win over Gulfport and last week’s 30-22 victory at Wayne County in the Region 4-5A opener at Waynesboro.
The Wayne County game was a hard hitting affair and the Maroon Tide (4-1, 1-0) also had to deal with a long weather delay (one hour and twenty-two minutes). Games like that can take a toll on a team without the proper approach the following days.
“We didn’t hit as much this week due to how physical the game was at Wayne County. When we’ve done that in the past, we tend to start out a little slow and are a little rusty on Friday. I hope that’s not the case this time,” Head Coach Dodd stated.
Despite the reduction on hitting, Lee felt good about his team’s preparation.
“I think we’ve had a real good week. We’ve worked on throwing the ball a little more and hopefully we will catch it a little better,” Lee added.
West Harrison (1-4, 0-1) played Stone close for three quarters last week before falling 45-26. The Hurricanes scored two touchdowns on fumble returns in that game.
Picayune’s defense played well again and forced Wayne County to punt twice in each half after just three plays and stopped the War Eagles twice more on forced and recovered fumbles.
“We’ve got a lot of guys really playing well defensively. Taylor, Jenkins, Johnson, and Stallings played really well at Wayne County,” Lee shared.
Against Wayne County, Brian Taylor had 12 tackles and recovered two fumbles. Rashard Johnson and Elijah Jenkins had 9 and 7 tackles respectively.
Senior linebacker / fullback Brian Taylor
Offensively, Picayune is paced by senior tailback Shaun Anderson who has 751 yards on 114 carries. The offensive line of center Garrett Franklin (6-0,275, Jr.), guards Darius Magee (5-8, 230,Jr.) and Jacob Brumley (5-9, 220, Sr.) , tackles Benny Holifield (6-0,260, Sr.) and Deonta Reed (5-11, 319,Soph), and tight end D.J. Ruff (6-3, 235, Soph), have been giving Anderson and the rest of the Maroon Tide backs plenty of seams and holes to run throught the past few weeks against some very talented defensive fronts.
Coverage of the Picayune game gets started at 6:30pm with the Paw Paw’s Campers & Cars Pregame Show at 6:30pm on WRJW 1320 AM, wrjwradio.com, and the WRJW smart phone app. Join Carey Meitzler (play by play), Todd Meitzler (color analyst), and “Dandy Don” Balch (sideline reporter) for the call of the game.
