Cascade of upsets shakes up Georgia high school football rankings
Georgia entered this week tied with Florida for most teams in the Super 25 national rankings (five each), making an argument as one of the two or three best high school football states of the 2023 season. On Saturday morning? It still may be one of the best, but it is infinitely more confounding.
Mill Creek (Hoschton, Ga.), ranked No. 10 in the nation, was 12-0 with a point differential of 481-182 (meaning an average score of 40-15) over the season and had won 20 games in a row stretching back to last season. With a Final Four appearance on the line, the Hawks fell 39-20 to the Camden County Wildcats (Kingsland, Ga.)
Camden County forced Mill Creek into its lowest-scoring performance of the season with a strong output from the defense that included a second-quarter interception on a screen pass and a fourth-quarter surge that didn’t allow a single point in the final 11 minutes of the game, helping the Wildcats increase its lead from 24-20 to a full two possessions.
Mill Creek, a surefire Super 25 team over the last couple of years, has fallen.
Three spots below was Colquitt County (Norman Park, Ga.), another 12-0 team. After winning 13 straight games last year but falling in the quarterfinals, the Packers were looking to move into the semifinals this year and prove themselves as the top team in the state.
Standing in the way was Milton (Ga.), which entered the game on a seven-game win streak in which it had outscored opponents 287-51 (an average margin of about 41-7). The Hawks took down the No. 13 team in the nation 39-37 as Luke Nickel, a Miami quarterback commit, passed for 302 yards and scored four touchdowns.
Colquitt County led 25-14 as the first half was winding to a close, but the Milton Hawks scored with less than a minute left to cut the deficit to 25-22. The Hawks then used that momentum to flip the score, going up 36-25 at the end of the third. Trailing by eight points with less than five minutes left, Colquitt County scored a touchdown but failed to convert the two-point attempt. Neither team would score again and the Packers went down.
Here is a highlight reel of some of the TOP moments from the @CCPackersFball vs. @MiltonEagles_FB game! The Eagles defeated the Packers, 39-37 and will face Grayson in the semifinals. #gpbsports pic.twitter.com/Gw85QsCpz8
— GPB Sports (@GPBsports) November 25, 2023
No. 15 Walton (Marietta, Ga.) vs. No. 23 Carrolton (Ga.): Finally, a matchup in which there was no way a Super 25 team would not win.
Walton managed Carrolton with relative ease, winning 56-35 in a very high-scoring game, flipping last year’s 52-27 loss to the hands of the same Trojans team.
Three-star Wake Forest quarterback commit Jeremy Hecklinski threw for three touchdowns and rushed for a fourth while passing for almost 400 yards, according to MaxPreps. Three-star Memphis running back commit Makari Bodiford scored four touchdowns, two of which came in the second half after the lead had been cut to seven.
Walton and Camden County will now face off in the semifinals. On the flip side is Milton and Grayson (Loganville, Ga.).
Grayson reached after taking down No. 16 Buford 19-14. The defense was stellar, obliterating an offense led by Dylan Raiola, a top-five recruit on the 247Sports Composite. Raiola, committed to Georgia, passed 12-for-17 for just 136 yards while taking six sacks, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Rams forced and recovered three fumbles in the first half alone and held Buford to a negative number of rushing yards.
With that, the fourth-ranked Georgia team went down. The Nos. 10, 13, 16, and 23 spots are open. That shift doesn’t just affect the chase for the Georgia AAAAAAA crown — it shifts the landscape of the national rankings.
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