Dougherty Trojans football could claim a share of region title Thursday night

ALBANY — The No. 4- ranked Dougherty Trojans will host Thomasville on Thursday night at Hugh Mills Stadium and the winner will claim at least a share of the Region 1-AAA championship with only one football game remaining on the regular season schedule.

It would be Dougherty’s first region championship since the 2005 season when the Trojans were 5-0 in the region and made it to the state championship game before losing to Peach County. Dougherty enters at 8-0 overall and 3-0 in the region, while Thomasville is 5-3 and 3-0.

“This is a game we’ve got to have if we are going to win the region,” said Dougherty head coach Johnny Gilbert. “If we lose, we could still get a share, but even if Thomasville beats us and loses to Crisp (County) then the head-to-head would give Thomasville the edge. We need to win this game.”

Also, if the Trojans beat Thomasville, but lose to Carver-Columbus next week, there would be three teams with a 3-1 record, which would mean other tiebreakers would take place and there is no guarantee the Trojans would end up in the top spot.

Thomasville reached the Class AA state finals last season, finishing with a 13-2 record. With a new coaching staff after Zach Grage left Thomasville for the job at Lowndes and head coach Johnny DeLay taking over, the Bulldogs started slowly, losing three of their first four games to highly ranked football teams — Brooks County (No. 4 in Class A, Div. I), Thomas County Central (No. 7 in Class AAAAAA) and Bainbridge (No. 7 in Class AAAA). Since then, they have won four straight, including a 15-14 win over Carver-Columbus, which made it to the state finals last year and knocked Dougherty out of the state playoffs.

The Trojans will be in the playoffs, regardless if they win or lose Thursday night, but Gilbert and the Trojans want that region championship to have the home-field advantage in the upcoming playoffs and a better spot in the state playoff brackets.

“I’m concerned about three things,” the coach said. “We have to cut down on the penalties, we have to do a better job tackling and we have to catch the ball. We’ve had too many dropped passes. If we do those three things well, we can have a chance of winning and going pretty far.”

We have tackling drills every day. We work on this all the time. And I talked to the team again (Monday) in our team meeting about penalties. In that part of the third quarter where we had two holding penalties and blocking in the back penalty, we just looked bad. We can’t do that.”

The Thomasville offense put up 56 points last week against Columbus, its biggest total of the year so far. It will be up to the Dougherty defense to slow that unit down.

The Dougherty defense held a potent Monroe offense to just 12 points and a total of just 38 yards rushing on 30 attempts. Gilbert is looking for more from his defensive front.

“The defensive front has been the key for our defense all year and they played really well Friday night,” Gilbert said. “But they haven’t peaked yet. These guys are still getting better and that is what we need them to do.”

The defensive front is led by senior Stantavious Smith, junior Maurice Davis and senior Octovious Griffin.

On the other side of the ball, the offense is led by junior quarterback Kameron Davis, who has amassed 2,719 yards this season — the most yards of any player in Class AAA in Georgia. Davis has thrown for 1,863 yards and 16 touchdowns and rushed for 826 yards and nine touchdowns. He has also caught a pass for 30 yards. But if defenses key on only Davis, senior running backs Jacob Stallworth or Kadarriyon Johnson can break loose or wide receivers Larry Lane or Malik Dixon can take a screen to the end zone in a matter of seconds.

Since the fourth game of the season, the Bulldogs have not given up more than 14 points in a game. But then, they haven’t dealt with Kam Davis and company yet.

Thursday night weather is expected to be cool and clear, so bundle up and get to Hugh Mills early. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m.

Joe WhitfieldJoeWhitfield[email protected]