The buzzsaw that is the Gainesville Red Elephants football team rolled through Mt. Airy Friday night and walked away with a 49-7 victory over Habersham Central High School in a dreary rain-soaked affair.
The Raiders (3-4, 1-2 Region 8-AAAAAA) fell behind quickly and were never really able to gain level footing in the contest.
Gainesville (7-0, 3-0 8-AAAAAA), which is ranked No. 2 in the state in Class AAAAAA by MaxPreps, won the toss and took the ball on the opening kick.
The first offensive play for the Red Elephants was a 50-yard run for senior running back Gavin Hall.
On the Raiders ensuing drive, they fumbled the ball on the second play and junior linebacker Carmelo Byrd scooped the ball and scored.
Gainesville forced a punt on the next drive for Habersham Central, blocking it and recovering the ball on the 11-yard line.
From there, on the first play, senior quarterback Baxter Wright (8-of-11, 144 yards, 3 TD) found Sky Niblett.
That touchdown pass gave the Red Elephants a 21-0 lead less than three minutes into the contest.
“You’ve got to make them earn everything,” Habersham Central Head Coach Benji Harrison said. “We let them bust a play right off the bat. Then we turned it over right off the bat, then we had two blocked punts right off the bat. You’re not going to do that and win against anybody, much less a team like them.”
That second blocked punt came six minutes later and set up a one-play, 33-yard touchdown pass caught by senior Eric Hart.
Gainesville went up 42-0 following two scores – an 11-yard pass to Travien Watson and a 21-yard run by Hall – in the second quarter and held that lead at halftime.
Harrison said his message at the break was to “forget the scoreboard” and work on things that can help them prepare for the remainder of the season.
“We did everything as bad as we could possibly do it in the first half against a good football team,” Harrison said. “Forget the scoreboard, don’t look at the scoreboard. Everything we didn’t do well, let’s try to improve on it in the second half and build momentum because there’s things we’re going to do in the second half of this game we’re going to do next week and the following week, so let’s work on us and try to solidify some of the things we messed up in the first half and fix them for the second half.”
With a running clock in the second half, running back Donnie Warren (16 carries, 115 yards, 1 TD) took a tough run to the end zone, capping off a 10-play, 86-yard drive for the Raiders.
The final score of the contest came on a 46-yard run by Gainesville’s Zion Buffington.
“We knew we’d dug ourselves probably too big of a hole in that first half, but let’s just go and do things the right way, handle ourselves the right way and do what you know how to do regardless of who’s lined up across from you,” Harrison said of the mentality for the second half. “We knew it was a tough battle from the get-go, but you can’t start the way we did and now you’ve got to learn from that because next week is a big one against a team we feel like we match up with well.”
Next week, Habersham Central returns to the friendly confines of Raider Stadium to face the Raiders of North Forsyth.
Harrison said the coaching staff has seen North Forsyth and credits their built-up confidence in making them a tough team.
“The thing they’ve got is they’ve graduated some guys, but the thing they do is they’ve created a little tradition of winning,” Harrison said. “When you do that, even when you graduate guys, you still feel confident when you go into a game. That’s what I see from them.”
The game will be senior night, but Harrison said that should be a little extra motivation from the senior leadership on the team.
“Senior night, it’s not a distraction. If anything, I think it motivates those seniors to realize it could be their last time playing on this field,” he said. “I think that’ll motivate them, but the motivation will be that it’s another opportunity that means a lot and we’ll be ready to play.”
The Raiders have three games remaining on the schedule, including North Forsyth. Those contests, in Harrison’s opinion, are “huge” to getting into the playoffs and determining any kind of seeding for the playoff bracket.
Still, he’s taking the schedule one game at a time.
The head coach said his team will have to prepare well this next week and “flush” this loss to Gainesville and move on.
“We’ve got to put this one behind us, which I think we will,” Harrison said. “We’ve got to go play a really good four quarters of football against a team that, if we don’t, it won’t be good.
“I like our team. I like how we’ve been playing,” he continued. “I don’t like how we played tonight, but I feel like we’ll bounce back quick and go have a good showing next week.”
