STARKVILLE — The difference in the huddles was noticeable.
On one side, a coach told his players they are a “four-quarter team” and encouraged the silent bunch to keep its head up.
Down the left sideline, a giddy group of Wildcats couldn”t contain themselves as they celebrated.
Louisville had reason to be boisterous Saturday after it defeated West Point 21-20 in the first game of the day at the Fall High School Jamboree at Mississippi State”s Davis Wade Stadium.
Sophomore quarterback Wyatt Roberts connected with senior wide receiver C.J. Bates on a pair of touchdown passes and hit Lathomas Brown for another.
The success Louisville had through the air mirrored West Point”s effectiveness on the ground. The Green Wave used quarterback DeQuinten Spraggins and five running backs to rumble for 199 yards on 22 carries.
Both teams likely will follow those games plans and have a lot of success in different classifications. Louisville”s challenge will be to unseat Region 4, District 4 champion Noxubee County in Class 4A of the Mississippi High School Activities Association, while West Point will try to win its third consecutive MHSAA title in Class 5A.
Both teams face tough non-district schedules designed to prepare them for their march to titles. Both coaches also agreed that the two quarters their teams played Saturday will go a long way to making them better.
“This was a good morale-builder,” Louisville coach M.C. Miller said. “Anytime you can beat the No. 2 team in the state, that”s a lot. This could set the tone for your season right here.”
West Point coach Chris Chambless tried after the game to pump up a visibly deflated team. He stressed the nature of the Green Wave”s style of play would prove effective in a four-quarter game, but he also acknowledged the team didn”t do itself any favors with turnovers and its inability to shut down Bates, a 6-foot-2 wide receiver.
“Like I told them right there, you learn valuable lessons and we never say the word ”lose”,” Chambless said. “We say we”re going to learn the lessons we have to learn, and we saw the things we wanted to work on.”
Chambless said his team stuck to a script because it wanted to judge how players performed in situations, and he was pleased with what he saw as his team will prepare to play host to two-time defending MHSAA Class 6A champion South Panola at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
West Point played without senior linebacker Charles Heard, who was injured Friday in a car wreck. Heard was on the sideline and had his arm in a sling. Chambless said X-rays on Heard were negative, and that he hopes to have him back as soon as possible.
Without Heard, West Point”s defense limited Louisville to 34 rushing yards on 14 carries. The only problem was Roberts hit Bates on scoring strikes of 53 and 6 yards. He also hit Brown for a 65-yard touchdown pass.
Miller credited the development of Roberts and Bates to the work his team did in 7-on-7 camps in the offseason. He said Roberts started as a freshman last season and will be a player the team will build itself around for the next three seasons. The presence of Bates will make Roberts even more effective.
“(Bates) has improved a lot,” Miller said. “He was pretty good last year, but we didn”t have the offensive line and couldn”t get it to him as much.”
Louisville also had Tahj Ford and Blake Cunningham at receiver last year, and Miller expects Bates to see a lot of double teams, much like when he was at Noxubee County for Vincent Sanders” senior season. He said Bates will be a “marked man,” so he will have to rise to that challenge, as will the Wildcats” other skill position players and its defense.
“Our running game is going to have to pick it up because that will take a lot of the pressure off,” Miller said. “We couldn”t stop the run like we should, but we”re going to get better. They couldn”t stop our passing game. … It is a great honor to beat West Point anytime because they can play.
“It is going to wake people up. We didn”t get much media coverage, but I told the kids not to worry about it and it will come. Sometimes you can fly up under the radar. That sounds good to me. We”re going to do a good job working with them and trying to keep them up and trying to keep them going.”
Chambless said no one will duck his head because there were plenty of positives. Tez Lane paced West Point with 78 rushing yards, including a 51-yard touchdown run. Spraggins added a 40-yard scoring run up the middle, and Mario Virges scored on a 4-yard burst. The Green Wave showed impressive depth in the backfield behind an experienced offensive line that controlled the line of scrimmage.
“We work on running the ball year-round,” Chambless said. “When we can move the chains by running the football, that is a big positive for us. I was real pleased to see that.
Spraggins, a senior in his first action after spending the past two years backing up Justin Cox, hit Aeris Williams, Lane, and Will Harrell on passes and showed the athleticism the Green Wave will need to keep teams off balance.
Chambless praised the way Spraggins ran the offense and got the team on and off the field. He said that area — like all of the others — needs to learn from the two quarters and avoid costly turnovers (two fumbles) that the team committed.
“The secondary is brand new,” Chambless said. “That has been the hardest working group since the spring. They have improved. Louisville has a real good receiver, and we had him covered up a few times, and we have to do a better job of ripping. We got called for a face guard down here. But we”re going to get a lot better in the secondary. Those guys are hustlers, and they are willing to work. Getting to see live action like they did today is going to help them out tremendously because none of them were out on the field last year.”
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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