Vance County Friday Night Football returns to WIZS 1450 AM and wizs.com Friday night at 6:45 p.m. for airtime and 7 p.m. for kickoff. Double coverage of Southern Vance hosting Roanoke Rapids and Northern Vance at Bunn. Tune in for Live Play by Play and score updates of both local teams.
The Yellow Jackets of Roanoke Rapids are unbeaten this season, which places them alongside South Granville at the top of the Northern Carolina Conference. With no open date so far this season, Roanoke Rapids is 7-0 while South Granville is 6-0. So when those Jackets come swarming into Southern Vance’s Raider stadium this Friday night, it will be the second week in a row for the Raiders facing off with a high-powered conference opponent. Southern Vance took a 52-6 beating from South Granville last week, losing starting QB Elijah Stewart to a foot injury in the first half, and his status is unclear for this week’s game. Stewart’s backup was also knocked out of last week’s game, so Coach Darry Ragland might be improvising against the Jackets.
Roanoke Rapids might be looking at this game as a chance to stay loose going into their own home game with South Granville next week – a matchup that should decide the conference championship, although both of the top dogs must still tangle with Bunn, which, although not in top form, is still a formidable team and the 2-time defending league champion from 2015 and 2016. Although not as dominating on paper as South Granville, which has 3 shutouts this season and has broken 50 points in 3 games, Roanoke Rapids has a right to feel confident this week. The Jackets are averaging scoring 39 points per game, and they allow their opponents under 10 points per week. That’s a bit better than South Granville on offense, but a looser defense than South, which has allowed under 4 points per game. The Yellow Jackets have no 50-point games (but 3 games in the 40s) and their only shutout was a 46-0 pasting of 1A Granville Central. Northern Vance has played both teams, and while the Vikings were shut out by South Granville 54-0, they scored 10 points on Roanoke Rapids before falling 35-10.
Southern Vance started the conference season with a tough 34-30 loss to Bunn, which gave them the confidence and momentum they needed to rack up their two road wins before colliding with South Granville. The Raiders came into their South Granville game last week with a satisfying 3-3 overall record and back-to-back conference wins over Webb and Granville Central. Along the way they improved on their stats: the Raiders averaged scoring 31 points per game, and allowed 26, BC (Before Creedmoor). This is not a formula for a brilliant championship season, but it can certainly get a team to over .500. They are now 3-4 and 2-1 in the league and are firmly established in the middle of the conference standings just below Warren County, which has not yet played either of the top two.
AC(After Creedmoor), however, the Raiders’ scoring average dropped to 28, and the points against rose to 30 points per game. If last Friday’s massacre were just a bad loss, Southern would be in a better position to bounce back against Roanoke Rapids, but the loss of some key players, especially Stewart, my be too much to overcome. At least this game is at home for the Raiders, because playing in Roanoke Rapids is always a disadvantage.
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The Bunn Wildcats host Northern Vance this Friday, planning to bring the Vikings back down to earth after Northern collected its first win of the season last week against 1A conference opponent Louisburg. It was a happy Homecoming last Friday at Northern Vance, but the narrow 17-14 victory over the Warriors may not provide enough momentum for the Vikings to match up well with Bunn. The Wildcats, with their first new coach in almost 30 years, have been struggling a bit this season, at least by “Bunn standards.” The two-time defending conference champions, who fell a couple of touchdowns short of the state 2A championship in 2015, were 1-2 going into conference play, and have not blown conference opponents off the field with their running game as they have in past seasons. They are 3-0 in the conference, placing them in third place behind the two unbeaten heavyweights, South Granville and Roanoke Rapids, but they just barely got by Southern Vance 34-30 in the conference opener and gave up 128 penalty yards in last week’s 56-35 win over Warren County. They were tied 29-29 with Warren at half time, and then shut the Eagles down until late in the 4th period.
At 4-2 overall the ‘Cats now average scoring just under 32 points per game. The problem is that they also allow opponents to score the same number of points – a rare scoring differential for the Wildcats, who scored 48 points per game last season and held rivals to 23. But Bunn would need to slip much further than they have to give the Vikings a chance this week. Northern has scored less than half as many points as Bunn this season, and has allowed a few more points per game. The Vikings actually have a competent defense, especially against the pass, but Bunn hardly ever passes the ball, so . . .