SCOOBA — Inching up another spot to No. 3 in this week’s NJCAA Top 20 football poll, the East Mississippi Community College football team will begin its final month of the regular season at 3 p.m. Saturday when it takes on No. 12 Northeast Mississippi in Booneville.
The Homecoming contest at NEMCC’s Tiger Stadium will feature a battle of unbeatens. The winner will take a huge step toward securing this year’s MACJC North Division championship.
A video stream of the marquee MACJC matchup will be available at www.njcaatv.ihigh.com. The contest will also be broadcast live by WFCA (107.9 FM). A live broadcast also can be heard at EMCC’s athletics web site — http://athletics.eastms.edu — or by logging onto www.wfcafm108.com.
The matchup is the jucoweekly.org Game of the Week. A game recap highlight video, including postgame interviews with coaches and players from both teams, will be posted on the www.jucoweekly.org website on Monday.
Having outscored their last two opponents, 104-13, with recent home wins against Coahoma (56-6) and Itawamba (48-7), coach Buddy Stephens’ Lions (5-0) moved up one notch to third in this week’s NJCAA Top 20 poll.
Blinn College (Texas), which defeated former-No. 1 Navarro College (Texas) on Saturday, is the NJCAA’s new top-ranked team in the country, followed by Arizona Western College.
Snow College (Utah) and Butler CC (Kansas) round out the nation’s top 5.
Mississippi Gulf Coast (No. 10), Hinds (No. 17), and Northwest Mississippi (No. 18) also are ranked this week.
The No. 3 rating is EMCC’s highest poll position since it was No. 2 in the early portion of the 2009 campaign. Two years ago, EMCC avenged an early season home setback to Mississippi Gulf Coast by claiming their first state football championship with a 75-71 shootout victory against MGCCC in the 2009 MACJC title game in Scooba.
Now 29-8 and 19-2 in division play under Stephens’ guidance dating back to 2008, EMCC will try to avenge one of those setbacks Saturday afternoon in Booneville. A year ago in Scooba, the visiting Tigers broke loose for 330 rushing yards and seven rushing touchdowns, including 267 yards and four scores by running back Jaquise Cook, to earn a 49-42 road win.
Undefeated in seven MACJC North Division road outings dating back to 2008, EMCC’s most recent visit to Booneville resulted in a 49-0 shutout victory in Oct. 9, 2008. Prior to last year’s home loss to Northeast Mississippi, EMCC had prevailed in four straight series meetings (2006-09).
Averaging 40.6 points per outing on the year and ranked second nationally with a per-game average of 522.4 yards of total offense, EMCC has trailed its opposition only 2 minutes, 11 seconds this season.
Off to their best start since 1974, EMCC is bidding to move to 6-0 for the first time since legendary Hall of Fame football coach Bob “Bull” Sullivan directed his 1964 squad to a program-best 8-0 start on the way to a 9-2 record and state runner-up finish.
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