Titans dealt loss Neshoba Central bests Ridgeland 42-28 in soggy battle
Zy McDonald put together another big game, but it wasn't enough to outpace a high-powered Neshoba Central team that handed Ridgeland a soggy 42-28 loss Friday night.
With the loss, the Titans (7-2) dropped to 4-1 in Region 2-5A play. As it stands, they are tied for second with this week's opponent, Holmes County Central.
A week ago, Ridgeland looked to be in control of the region. Now, it needs to win Friday in order to finish second in the region and retain a good enough playoff seed to host a game in the first round.
"We wanted that number one seed," first-year Ridgeland coach David White said. "Now, we're just trying to hand on to the number two seed."
If they can't find a way to perform better on defense than they did against Neshoba Central, it won't matter where they play.
The Titans did pretty much exactly what they expected to offensively against the Rockets (6-3, 5-0 in Region 2-5A). McDonald, Ridgeland's splendid junior quarterback, completed 20 of his 32 passes for 404 yards and two touchdowns with one interception.
His big-play threat Yamarus Banks caught three passes for 155 yards and two scores and senior J.D. Wilkerson caught seven passes for 142. Richard Mays caught four balls for 65 yards.
The problem came in the running game, where the Titan offense averaged just 3.5 yards a carry. Markell Young rushed 16 times and scored once on the ground, but ultimately only averaged 2.9 yards a touch. McDonald opted to keep the ball eight times and added 25 yards and one score.
The problem was inside the five-yard line, where Ridgeland was turned away twice.
"We got down there once and had back-to-back holding calls against us and didn't score," White said. "Then, near the end of the game we got down there and lost yards on a running play, dropped a pass in the end zone and got stuffed. I really feel like we were two yards away from winning that game, but you can't takeaway from Neshoba Central and the job they did agains us."
Holmes County Central is a very similar team.
Jaguar quarterback Justin Smith leads an offense that is as balanced as it gets, averaging 184.5 yards per game through the air and 189.7 yards on the ground.
Smith has thrown 24 touchdown passes and tailback Reko Walden run for 1,058 yards and nine touchdowns in 10 games.
Opponents have only averaged 13.4 points a game against the Jaguar defense, which allowed just six touchdowns in four games in the month of October.
"They've got some big and tough players," White said. "Especially on defense. They've got some big time athletes that can really run and they've got that tough mentality, that swagger. But we know what we've got to do. We've got to be more physical and run the football."
Ridgeland and Holmes County are scheduled to play Friday night at 7 p.m. in Lexington.