Life has been good again this week in Vicksburg High’s football fieldhouse.

All of the anger and frustration associated with an 0-5 start was washed away with a dominating 23-0 win over Neshoba Central last Friday. The victory not only got the Gators into the win column, it gave a talented team an infusion of confidence and hope that there’s still time to turn the season around and make a playoff push.

“With that, it puts us at 1-1 and the kids see that pretty much everything we’ve been doing works as long as we execute,” Vicksburg coach Lorenzo Breland said. “We ran it well, we played good defense, we won the field position battle in the kicking game. We just have to have that same mentality for the rest of the year.”

The win over Neshoba Central was shockingly easy, but now comes the hard part — following it up against one of the best teams in Mississippi.

The Gators (1-5, 1-1 Region 2-5A) host Cleveland Central (7-0, 2-0) in their return to Memorial Stadium on Friday night. Cleveland Central is in its first year of existence after East Side and Cleveland High School were consolidated, and has quickly emerged as a championship contender in Class 5A.

The Wolves have outscored their opponents 222-94 and are averaging 389.2 yards of offense per game.

Quarterback Kamarian Williams, a 6-foot-9 senior, has thrown for 1,286 yards, 11 TDs and four interceptions in 143 pass attempts.

They’re ranked No. 9 in this week’s Mississippi Associated Press overall high school football poll, and No. 5 in Class 5A.

“They definitely caught the state by shock. Nobody expected them to be doing this in their first year,” Breland said. “Their front six or seven gets after it, and it’s going to be one of the best quarterbacks we’ve seen this year.”

This is Vicksburg’s fourth game against a team that has been ranked in the AP poll at some point in the season. For the first time since the season opener against Oxford, however, they’re going into a game with some positive momentum.

The Gators only had 267 yards of offense against Neshoba Central, but ran for 172. Running back Mike Sims, who had missed several games due to injury, led the team with 87 yards and quarterback Joe Johnson had 66 and a touchdown.

The Gators averaged 5.5 yards per carry for the game. They attempted just 10 passes, did not turn the ball over, and had seven penalties for a modest 40 yards a week after racking up more than 100 yards in penalties.

The lack of a running game, penalties and turnovers had been major problems during the five-game losing streak, and reversing all of those trends at once let the team’s raw talent shine through.

“It was finally settling in and playing our game. We didn’t turn the ball over, the defense created turnovers, and we got the win,” Breland said. “That was definitely good to get the running game going. We’d been without Mike Sims for two weeks and we definitely missed him. Our offensive line had its best game to date. Just being able to get the run game going and getting into a flow helped.”

FRIDAY’S AREA GAMES
All games start at 7 p.m.
Warren Central at Madison Central (Radio: 105.5 FM)
Cathedral at St. Aloysius (Radio: 101.3 FM)
Porter’s Chapel at Central Hinds (Radio: 104.5 FM)
Cleveland Central at Vicksburg (Radio: 107.7 FM)
Port Gibson at Franklin County
Murrah at Clinton
Prentiss Christian at Briarfield Academy
Franklin Academy at Tallulah Academy
Rebul Academy at Riverdale
Tensas Academy at Sharkey-Issaquena Academy
Wossman at Madison Parish (La.)

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