Northside avoids repeat and takes down Jones County in Macon Touchdown Club Kickoff Classic

MACON, Ga. — It looked like the Northside Eagles were going to suffer the same fate as the last time they were in Mercer’s Five Star Stadium, but a strong second half made sure that wasn’t the case.

For the second year in a row, Northside and the Jones County Greyhounds faced off in Five Star Stadium for the Macon Touchdown Club Kickoff Classic, but this time Northside took home the win 33-21.

It almost didn’t happen, and if Northside kept up their first half play, it wouldn’t have.

On their first drive of the game the ball popped loose and gave the ‘Hounds the ball on the Northside 31-yard-line.

On their next drive they managed to get all the way down to the Greyhounds’ 14, but a penalty derailed the drive and they settled for a 40-yard field goal.

The ‘Hounds responded in the second quarter with two big chunk plays — A Devin Edmonds 45-yard touchdown pass to Tyler Stewart and a Zion Ragins 36-yard pass to Zachari Thomas to give them a 14-10 lead at the half.

Omarion Tucker punched it in a yard for six right out of halftime, and Northside trailed 21-10.

It wasn’t clear if Northside was going to put it together, but on the next drive Damien Dee found senior wide out Keron Milton for 26 yards and a touchdown, putting them right back in the game down 21-17.

“We’ve got one of the best coaching staffs in state of Georgia if not the country,” Head coach Ben Bailey said. “I was glad of the resilience going down into halftime, we give up a big touchdown. The explosive plays got us but outside of that they didn’t do a whole lot, especially running the football, which is what we pride ourselves on, stopping the run. Kudos to them, that’s a great football team over there they’re going to have a great year. But I’m proud of our guys for stepping up and overcoming that adversity especially after halftime.”

E.J. Riley and Da’veon Latimore combined for a two-headed rushing attack in the second half and really helped move Northside up the field to get into scoring position. The pair combined for 118 yards and a touchdown.

The defense down the stretch is really what sealed the deal, however.

Northside had three takeaways in the second half alone, with Nick Linder snatching a ball for an interception and Ricardo Jones grabbing two of his own late in the fourth to stop any kind of comeback attempt.

To Bailey, it was Jones’ turnovers and the defense’s overall stability that stood out to him in the second half.

“Naturally [Ricardo Jones] sticks out because he had two big turnovers…we want to be plus-two and I think we were,” Bailey said. “I just remember him having those two turnovers and then some key third downs, getting off of the field to get our offense back on the field to give us some good field position was phenomenal.”

There may have been some Northside doubters after last week’s blowout loss in a scrimmage against Perry, but last week was not an accurate representation, according to Bailey.

“Last week was a scrimmage, we didn’t do everything we planned on doing tonight. We just had some guys last week that we wanted to see what they could do,” Bailey said. “We had a couple of people out, a couple people sick. We put the full plan in force today and they did an excellent job of executing.”

Now that game one is over, Bailey wants to take a little time to celebrate, but he’s ready to turn right back around to focus on his next opponent, Peach County.

“We want to go 1-0. That’s what we did today. We’ve got a short turnaround, tonight we’ll try to enjoy what little bit we can and then we’ll start preparing for Peach [County] and try to do the same thing,” Bailey said. “We’re just going to take it one game at a time, the schedule doesn’t get any easier so we’re going to try to focus on ourselves, fix the mistakes we made and continue to get better.”

Northside hosts Peach County at the MAC on Friday, Aug. 25 at 7:30 p.m.

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