Mississippi Friday night rewind: Ninth-ranked Pearl rolls to 5-0; No. 6 Ocean Springs edges No. 5 Picayune
Near the end of Friday night's 44-28 road win over Germantown, a dozen or so Pearl Pirates posed for a photo on the sideline, with all the players holding up the number five.
Those fives represent the Pirates' surprising 5-0 start after winning just two games a year ago.
"We are having some fun now," Pearl coach Justin Hunter said. "We know we've got a lot of work to do, and hardly anyone expected this out of us, but this feels good."
MORE: Check out the SBLive Mississippi Friday night scoreboard
The ninth-ranked Pirates looked good again Friday at Gluckstadt, pouring in four first-half touchdowns and rolling up 459 yards of offense.
Sophomore quarterback Jack Durr accounted for four touchdowns, with scoring runs of 58, 40 and five yards and a 14-yard touchdown pass to Kingi McNair.
The Pearl defense gave up some big plays, but they played hard and did their job in the first half while the offense piled up the points to get the big lead. Junior Kaleb Arterberry had three tackles for a loss in those first two quarters, then made an incredibly athletic play on an interception in the fourth quarter that all but sealed the game.
"We put in a lot of hard work in the off-season," Arterberry said. "Morning workouts... just anything to put in the work. We feed off each other, so we have to hype each other up."
Things get interesting from here, as the No. 9 Pirates get a week off before hosting a red-hot No. 7 Northwest Rankin Cougars team that won 41-19 Friday night at Brookhaven to get to 4-1.
A trio of Top 10 upsets
On a night when a couple of Top 10 teams narrowly escaped defeat, three of them weren't so fortunate.
The first big upset victim was No. 3 Tupelo, which lost a heart-breaker against Houston (Tenn.) 38-33 after taking the lead on a touchdown pass to JQ Witherspoon with 54 seconds left in the game. Houston went right down the field and scored on a 38-yard touchdown pass with six seconds left to seal the Golden Wave's fate.
The second Top 10 team to lose Friday night was the fifth-ranked Picayune Maroon Tide (3-2), which fell at home to No. 6 Ocean Springs 31-21 in a game that wasn't as close as the final score indicates.
The loss was just the second for the Maroon Tide in nearly two calendar years, and they'll have to make the adjustment offensively without all-everything back Chris Davis sidelined with a broken collarbone.
On the other side, the Greyhounds (4-1) are 4-0 since a 15-14 season-opening loss to Madison Central.
Speaking of the eighth-ranked Jaguars, they were third team ranked in the SB Live Power 10 to lose Friday night, falling at home against a good Warren Central team.
Elsewhere in Mississippi
There were a couple more eyebrow-raising scores in some key games from across the state. Here's a look:
- The Jeff Davis County Jaguars (4-1) erased the sting of their first loss of the season at Columbia with a convincing 28-13 win last year's Class 3A Champion Raleigh (3-2).
- Class 5A No. 2 Holmes County Central came out on top of an absolute barn burner at No. 4 Florence with a 42-40 victory.
- The Class 3A Nettleton Tigers (4-1) held on to beat Class 1A No. 2 Biggersville 32-21.
- Starkville, ranked fourth in the SB Live Mississippi Power 10, bounced back from its first loss of the season with a breezy 33-13 win over Oxford in the "Little Egg Bowl."
- The Forest Bearcats (5-0) answered the bell and won a defensive slug-fest against defending Class 2A Champion Scott Central 10-7. It was the Bearcats' first big test of the season, and they passed.
