No. 3 Co-Lin travels to No. 1 East Mississippi
Published 11:30 am Thursday, September 4, 2014
WESSON – Regular season matchups don’t get much bigger than the trip that the Copiah-Lincoln football team takes on Thursday. The No. 3 Wolfpack will load up and travel to Scooba to take on the No. 1 East Mississippi Lions in a highly anticipated MACJC contest.
Co-Lin is coming off of a season opening 37-13 win over Itawamba in Wesson. In that game the Wolfpack got 400 yards passing from sophomore quarterback Daniel Fitzwater and the defense held Itawamba to a single touchdown. Freshman wide receiver Donald Gray was named MACJC Offensive Player of the Week after catching 7 passes for 183 yards and three touchdowns. On the ground Co-Lin was led by running back De’Lance Turner who gained 118 yards and scored two touchdowns on only 11 carries. Freshman kicker Greg Nickles made a 22-yard field goal, was 4-for-4 on point-after attempts, and had three touchbacks on kickoffs.
Defensive tackle Demond Tucker was named MACJC Defensive Player of the Week after recording nine tackles, 1.5 sacks, and forcing one fumble. Freshman defensive back Dy-Celious Reese had an interception and defensive end Ryan Duckworth recovered a fumble. Linebacker Justin Morgan was the leading tackler for Co-Lin with 11 stops. Sophomore defensive end Johnathan Calvin, a Mississippi State commit, had 2.5 sacks.
East Mississippi is coming off of a 52-14 win over Southwest Mississippi. The Lions wracked up 635 yards of total offense against the Bears. The Wolves and Lions have not had a regular season meeting since 2009. Their last two match-ups have come in the playoffs with Co-Lin winning both games.
In 2010 the teams met in a MACJC semifinal matchup in Wesson and the Wolfpack won that game 48-21. In 2012, again in the MACJC semifinals, the two teams met in a game that can only be described as a classic. The Lions took a 46-41 lead with 21.6 seconds remaining in the game. The ensuing kickoff was returned 90 yards by Co-Lin’s Joe Craig Jr. for the game winning score, giving Co-Lin a last-second 47-46 win over the defending national champion Lions. East Mississippi has won 13 consecutive games since that loss.
The Lions are defending national champions after capturing the title with a 52-32 win over Georgia Military College in the 2013 Mississippi Bowl. They are led on offense by Clemson transfer Chad Kelly, nephew of NFL Hall of Famer Jim Kelly. The Lions run a fast paced offense that led the nation in scoring in 2013 with an average of 62.2 points per game and posted 7,327 yards of total offense on the year.
The game kicks off at 7 p.m. in Scooba and can be heard on 104.3 FM in Brookhaven and on colinathletics.com.