Pillow Academy visits Heritage Academy on Friday night with home field advantage in the first round of the playoffs on the line for the Mustangs.
Pillow is currently ranked ninth in power points (22) among Class 5A teams, which would set them up for a trip to Starkville Academy in the first round if the playoffs began this week. Starkville edged the Mustangs, 26-22, two weeks ago.
“It’s a big conference game,” first-year head coach Jim Crowder said of the regular season finale. “We certainly respect Heritage. They’ve certainly been the team with the most success in our conference the past couple years. Any time you get a chance to compete against them, you should be fired up about it. You want to be playing your best football into the playoffs, and that’s certainly no exception for us this year.”
Former Pillow assistant Sean Harrison has built Heritage into a District 1-5A powerhouse in his fifth year in charge of the Patriots’ program. Heritage won a state title in 2019 before falling in the semifinals last season.
The Patriots (8-1) were undefeated through eight games this year until suffering a 38-25 loss to Leake Academy last week. They’ll be eager to bounce back against a Mustangs (5-4) squad that just snapped a three-game losing streak with a 37-0 rout of Washington School last week.
Heritage’s offense operates through signal caller Mack Howard, the top-rated quarterback recruit in the state as a junior. The gunslinger picked apart Pillow’s defense to lead a 19-6 victory through the air last year, finishing 22-of-37 passing for 227 yards and three touchdowns. Howard has superb chemistry with his top target, Trey Naugher, whom he has been playing with since fourth grade.
The scouting report appears to be out on explosive Pillow junior Hayes Bennett, who most recently showed off his speed on a 99-yard kickoff return for a touchdown against Starkville. Bennett found the end zone again for the third week in a row at Washington on a 20-yard touchdown run. Opponents have started kicking away from the playmaker on special teams, but Crowder doesn’t seem to mind.
“We’ll move him around different spots on special teams,” Crowder said of Bennett. “If they kick away from him, sometimes that leads to good field position for us. So that’s something we’ll get used to trying to adjust to.”
Junior running back Dayne Sanford rebounded in last week’s blowout win, reaching the 100-yard mark again after managing just 2 yards per carry in the loss to Starkville.
- Contact Riley Overend at 662-581-7237 or roverend@gwcommonwealth.com. Follow @OverendOut on Twitter.
