Over the past several seasons South Greene and Hampton have squared off with the Region 1-2A championship on the line, but this year will be different as both schools’ playoff fates are already set.
Whether or not the stakes are high this week does not matter to South Greene coach Shawn Jones, as he wants to finish the regular season on a high note with the Rebels playing their best football.
“It’s huge to win this week. This team has worked extremely hard, and we have been in playoff mode since Seymour week,” Jones said. “We’re sitting here at 7-1 and I still feel like we haven’t put a complete game together yet. If we can put four quarters together we can be a pretty good football team. That’s what we hope to do Thursday night.”
South Greene enters Thursday’s game with a 7-1 record and riding a seven-game win streak. Last week the Rebels beat West Greene 41-7. South Greene is 4-0 in Region 1-2A play and because of a 21-6 win over Happy Valley the Rebels have already clinched the No.1 seed from the region in the playoffs. With a loss to Hampton South Greene could finish the year tied with Happy Valley in the region standings, but the Rebels hold the head-to-head tiebreaker.
Hampton is most likely the No.4 seed in Region 1-2A, win or lose on Thursday, but if Hampton beats South Greene and winless Cumberland Gap beats Eagleton the Bulldogs would move into the No.3 seed. So far this year Cumberland Gap has been outscored by 187-14 by region opponents.
Hampton played twice last week, first beating Unaka 58-18 on Monday and then losing Eagleton 36-20 on Friday. The Bulldogs enter Thursday 3-6 on the year and 2-2 in region play. They lost their quarterback in the loss to Eagleton and Jones expects to see a heavy dose of Dom Burleson who ran for 222 yards on 37 carries against the Royals. Against Unaka Peyton Townsend ran for 110 yards on six attempts.
“We know when we play Hampton we are going to get a tough team,” Jones said. “They can come in here one of two ways. They can be ready to play and bring a physical football game. Or they can choose to pack it in and move on to the next week. I hope it’s the second one, but I doubt that happens. It’s going to be a lot of smash-mouth football and we just have to be ready for them.”
Jones expects to see an aggressive Bulldogs’ defense on Thursday that will load the box and dare quarterback Jacob Susong to throw the ball. For most of the season that has been a successful formula for the Rebels, and last week Susong threw for 147 yards on an efficient 13-of-16 effort.
South Greene still wants to establish the run game against the Bulldogs, and Jones is confident that his offensive line will be able to open holes for Nash Rader and Tripp Neas.
“We feel pretty confident that our line can get the job done, and if they don’t, I’ll be pretty disappointed. We feel like we can still run the football,” Jones said. “On defense they are going to send eight or nine every time and try to stop the run. They don’t care to give up a pass or two because they feel like they can stop you more times than you beat them. They’ll put eight or nine in the box and dare you to throw it.”
A year ago, Hampton won the meeting in Carter County 32-14, and the Bulldogs won 37-0 in 2022. In the last seven meetings South Greene is 4-3, but before that Hampton won five straight. The series that has been annually since 2013 after a nine-year hiatus. Hampton leads the all-time series 30-18 with the first game taking place in 1966.
