Linebacker Kmauri Morgan gets up-close with a Union Pines receiver last Friday.
Receiver Ameir Morrison nears the goal line last Friday.
ROCKINGHAM — The Richmond Senior High School Raiders are just one win away from locking up the Sandhills Athletic Conference title as they head on the road to face Lee County Friday.
With the Raider come off pummeling former head coach Bryan Till and his Union Pines Vikings 27-8 victory last Friday, Richmond now turns its attention to Lee County (4-3, 1-2), who occupies the third slot in the SAC standings but could leap frog multiple teams if they can snap the Raiders’ five-game winning streak Friday.
“A win is a win. I don’t think it was very pretty. Whatever that was, the kids played hard. Coming through a homecoming game, that’s extremely hard to play in. It’s extremely hard to practice in,” Coach Brad Denson said. “… We got a good game next week. This game [Friday] was not about myself or Coach Till whatsoever. We’re just coaches of a bunch of kids out here. It’s about the game of football. He had those guys prepared and he’s a great coach too”
While a characteristic night for the defense, who held Union Pines under 100 yards of total offense, Richmond picked up an uncharacteristic number of yards through the air with quarterback tandem Evan Hodges and Dominic Tillman combining for nearly 400 yards while completing 29 of 39 attempts. Despite having success through the air, the Raiders capped off their successful drives with running back Chance Crowder rushing for a pair of TDs, while running back Jordan Bostic and Tillman found pay dirt from short range.
“[The first touchdown] opened up the game. We kept getting flagged, but we kept coming back, focused and kept goingq,” said Crump, whose final TD pushed the Vikings out of contention with Union Pines needing three TDs just to get back into contention. “In practice we go hard. We go against each other. We got guys everywhere. We rotate in. We rotate out, and it lets us compete all night . We got a good defense over there. If we can execute against our defense, then we can go against any defense.”
Defensively, Friday was just another day at the office. Linebacker Kmauri Morgan had a team-leading 12 tackles, followed by 10 by fellow linebacker Terande Spencer, who also racked up a team-leading 2 sacks in the winning effort.
“We’re just moving on and focusing on the next game. When they came out after halftime, we struggled a little bit getting them off of the field. We had flashes, but we kept on playing hard,” said Spencer, who capped off the Vikings’ final offensive drive with a fourth-down sack. “We haven’t won the conference title in a couple of years. Our coaches are excited, we’re excited about the chance to win the conference title again. We just have to keep moving forward throughout the year, practicing hard and playing hard.”
With the win, the Raiders improved to 6-2 and remain undefeated in conference play at 4-0. Union Pines falls to 5-2 and 2-1 in the SAC, but remain in the hunt with Pinecrest. Should Richmond fall to Lee County, they may be playing for a portion of the conference title next Friday instead of being outright SAC champions.
“[Lee County] is just the next game on the schedule. That’s who we have to prepare for and that’s who we start preparing for [Saturday morning],” Coach Denson said.