North Oconee football bested Perry 31-15 at home in its first-round playoff match on Friday night in Bogart, Georgia.
The victory extended the reigning state champion Titans’ win streak to 26 games spanning from last season. Contrastly, the Panthers will finish its season at 4-7, just two years removed from winning the state title themselves.
North Oconee was much more dominant than the final score suggests. Its lockdown defense, which allowed just 5.9 points per game in the regular season, kept the ball in the Titans’ possession for the majority of the game. This gave the offense plenty of opportunities to put points on the board.
Senior quarterback Harrison Faulkner did just that, throwing two of the team’s four total touchdowns. The three-star Georgia Southern commit had multiple crafty scrambles that both extended drives and put the offense in position to score. Junior running back and linebacker Joby McCannon also had a standout performance, scoring a rushing touchdown while making several defensive plays on the other side of the ball.
For almost the entire first half, Perry struggled to find offensive chemistry while North Oconee continued to stack on points. By the start of the second quarter, the Titans firmly held a 21-0 lead.
However, after Perry downed a punt at North Oconee’s 1-yard line, the Titans went three-and-out and were forced to punt it right back from their own end zone. This put the Panthers in Titan territory for the first time all game. North Oconee’s defense stood strong to force a 42-yard field goal that was missed, but a costly penalty for running into the snapper suddenly gave Perry a first down inside the red zone instead. Running back Kam Oliver subsequently rushed for the Panthers’ first points of the night and cut the score to 21-7 with seconds left before halftime.
Though Perry was unable to build on this momentum out of the half, North Oconee could not click on offense either. In fact, the only points scored in the third quarter came from a 22-yard Titans field goal to extend the lead to 24-7. The defending state champions marched for one final touchdown drive to ice the game at 31-7 before Perry secured a garbage-time touchdown against North Oconee’s backup unit just before the buzzer.
Despite their impressive track record, the Titans are far from untouchable in the Class 4A tournament. North Oconee will still be without multiple key players including four-star Georgia edge commit Khamari Brooks and potentially three-star Kentucky receiver commit Dallas Dickerson, who did not suit up against Perry. Starting center Darian Elder also limped off the field and was seen using crutches following a leg injury in the first-round contest.
“Just keep being resilient,” Faulkner said of head coach Tyler Aurandt’s message for the team.
North Oconee will host the M.L. King Lions in the second round on Friday, Nov. 21 at 7 p.m. M.L. King beat Hiram 47-23 in the first round and boasts a 9-1 regular season record.