HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — Week nine of the high school football regular season is here, which means we’re just a couple of weeks away from the playoffs getting underway.
But before the regular season wraps up, teams all across the Tennessee Valley are still fighting for postseason berths and region championships.
Welcome to SportsMed Field, the site of our Jack’s Game of the Week for the Class 4A Region 8 championship between Priceville and Randolph, two of the area’s teams with the most ridiculous offenses.
The Bulldogs are 9-0 and in the midst of the longest win streak in program history, in search of just their second region title, the first since 2015.
The Raiders sit at 7-1 and Randolph has never won a region crown, so they’re hungry for their first in 2022.
Priceville has put up 392 points this season, including 72 in their week eight win over Westminster Christian. Randolph has 379 so far, which is a program record for the regular season, and they still have two more games to go.
Both teams sitting at 6-0 in region play — and tied for first place — so they’re both heading to the postseason, but again this is the region championship and both teams are hungry for that crown.
“I think [we’re] obviously feeling a little bit of the pressure, but they’ve been in big games before,” said Priceville Head Coach Chris Foster. “We’ve been in playoff games and that was was my message to them, saying ‘Let’s treat this like a playoff game, let’s see how we handle the pressure.’ It’s a good tune up for a few weeks from tonight.”
“We need to eliminate the big plays, they’re really explosive on offense, they do a great job on defense… so we need to make sure we’ve got our head up looking for blitzers and all that good stuff on the offensive line,” Foster continued.
“We’re real excited,” said David Lloyd, head coach for Randolph. “We set a lot of goals at the beginning of the year, during the summer, and to be at the opportunity where we have a chance to accomplish those goals… we’ve accomplished all the ones we’ve so far. This is the last one on the table, but just to have the opportunity to play in a game where we control our own outcome, we don’t have to worry about another team winning or losing.”
“We’ll know after tonight if we’re the region champions or the runners-up, and that’s always exciting when you have the opportunity to play like that, especially this late in the year,” Lloyd said. “Carry some momentum into playoffs, so we’re really excited about it.”
Priceville defeated Randolph, 35 to 21 on Friday night.