The wait is over for the New Hope football team.
The Trojans repeatedly came close to putting together a total team effort and recording a win, but each time, they couldn’t quite do it, and each time, New Hope suffered a loss.
“Shannon couldn’t stop us offensively,” New Hope coach Wade Tackett said. “We stopped us. We were that good against Houston until the fourth quarter. We were that good against Itawamba. Once we got inside the 30, penalties and turnovers just started biting us in the butt.”
On Friday against Aberdeen, though, the Trojans figured it out, improving to 2-3 with a 51-0 road win.
“We finally put together a clean offensive game plan and executed it cleanly,” Tackett said. “The defense did their part, feeding off what the offense was doing, and vice versa.”
Now New Hope is riding the momentum of the blowout win into Friday’s home rivalry matchup with Columbus (1-3). And the Trojans are well aware that the wait is over for the Falcons, too, as Columbus snapped a 20-game losing streak Friday with a 13-12 win over Lanier.
Despite the disparity in margins of victory, Tackett knows not to underestimate New Hope’s crosstown foe.
“They’ve got athletes all over the place,” Tackett said. “Got some kids that look like they get after it. Defensively we expect them to be probably our toughest test to this point.”
While the Falcons’ strength is undeniably their defense, Tackett has a weapon at his disposal that Columbus isn’t excited to face: running back Braylen Miller, who scored five touchdowns against Aberdeen.
“Braylen Miller is good,” Columbus coach Joshua Pulphus said. “He’s really good. That kid has something you can’t coach. He has a talent from God. You’re not gonna stop him. The only thing you can do is hope to contain him.”
Pulphus said even containing Miller would mean just three touchdowns for the New Hope star as opposed to last week’s five. That, for Columbus, might just be a victory.
Miller, on the other hand, doesn’t care much about how many times he breaks the plane as long as the Trojans leave the field with a victory.
“I’m just expecting to win,” Miller said. “I don’t care too much about stats.”
A win would, of course, even New Hope’s record at 3-3 and give the Trojans an edge in the district the two share, but it would also give the winner bragging rights in the teams’ first meeting since 2016, a 49-21 Columbus victory.
That’s important for Miller, who will have a lot of friends on the Columbus sideline — until 7 p.m. Friday, anyway
“I don’t have friends when we’re on the football field,” Miller said. “We’re all enemies then. After the game, we’re back to cool.”
Make no mistake — the bragging rights at stake Friday go beyond the players on the field.
Tackett and Pulphus, friends through the local “coaching fraternity,” are facing off as head coaches for the first time, bringing another interesting dynamic into Friday’s contest.
“He’s gonna give me his best, and I’m gonna give him my best,” Pulphus said. “And let the best man win.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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