Game of the Week Preview: Raiders ready to remain undefeated in region play in a region reunion
The Northeast Raiders (4-1) prepare to take on region opponent Dublin Fighting Irish (5-0) in our game of the week for week seven of the high school football season
MACON, Georgia – (41NBC/WMGT) – After losing their first game of the season to Peach County, Northeast Head Coach Jeremy Wiggins and his Raiders team have rallied to a 4-1 record behind a four game region win streak.
Northeast hasn’t just been winning, they’ve been dominating to say the least. The Raiders have scored almost 200 points, while they have averaged over 38 points a game. After the defense gave up 40 points in week one, the Raiders defense has only allowed 23 points total in the past four wins, with the last two games being 47-0 and 46-0 shutout victories.
Coach Wiggins is on track for at least another 8 win season, but it wont come easy. Northeast will need to utilize all the confidence they can from these last few wins to beat an undefeated Dublin team on the road.
These two teams haven’t battled each other since 2019, when they both were in the Region 3-AA. The all-time record is 2-5 favoring the Fighting Irish. However, this Northeast team has a lot more talent on both sides of the ball these days, and Coach Wiggins knows this team has improved as the season has progressed. Now he looks for some long overdue redemption in a region reunion matchup.
At Monday’s practice, Coach Wiggins spoke on how far this team has come since that Week One loss. “Just getting better week by week, preparing a little bit more” said Coach Wiggins. “I think going into that first game, we were still working out the kinks of what we need to get better. Each week, we just got better with preparation, just got better at knowing what our identity was going to be. It just got better each week just focusing on us.”
Wiggins went on to say, “I think we’ve been in some big games the last two or three years with this group right here, so I think that being on the road in front of tougher competition; we haven’t been scared of nobody. That doesn’t worry me, I just think the more so of us being focused and getting prepared is the biggest thing. Discipline, focus, toughness, and some effort. We are going to try to make sure we do all of those things to win the game.”
Raiders Junior Quarterback Reginald ‘Bam’ Glover is on the same page as Coach Wiggins. “Oh you know, we confident like always. Everybody confident. If we play our ball, we’ll be good” said Glover. “After that first loss, we were down. We weren’t that focused in the summer, like we are supposed to, but everybody focused now, and we are on a winning streak right now.”
Northeast Senior Middle Linebacker Santana Balkcom is prepared to go into battle with high scoring offense. “They don’t make too many mistakes so, what we are going to have to do is not make no mistakes” said Balkcon. “This is going to be a competitive game and we just going to have to play, and may the best man win.”
Kickoff at the Shamrock Bowl is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Friday night.
Catch live pregame coverage during 41NBC News at 5, 5:30 and 6 p.m. Don’t miss highlights from our Game of the Week, and others, on this Friday’s edition of The End Zone during 41NBC News at 11.
