By Mike London

mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — Yes, it’s rivalry week for high school football, but the reliable Massey Ratings predict it will be a rivalry week without serious drama.

Salisbury is favored by 21 to handle a North Rowan team that it handled roughly by 60 last fall.

Carson is a 27-point favorite to maintain its winning ways against neighbor South Rowan.

A.L. Brown vs. Concord was once a sure thing to provide a game worth going to see, but the Wonders have claimed ownership of that series in recent years and are favored by 22 to take the “Bell Game” again.

West Rowan is favored by 34 to beat East Rowan, although 34 seems like a lot. Central Cabarrus coach Zach Bevilacqua was quoted recently by the Independent Tribune as saying East was the best 0-7 team he’d ever seen. Now East is a 1-8 team, but maybe it’s the best 1-8 team in the state — for what that’s worth. The
NCHSAA RPI rankings still have East below South Rowan, so maybe the RPI rankings aren’t the most reliable system in the world.

Davie vs. Glenn, I’m not sure how large a rivalry that is, but it certainly looks like a tug-of-war. Glenn is favored by 6. The loser definitely is out of the 4A playoff picture, and the winner may still end up on the wrong side of the bubble as far as the 32-team 4A West bracket. That last-minute loss to West Forsyth might do in the War Eagles.

If you’re wondering where you might like to go for next week’s playoffs, Salisbury, North Rowan and West Rowan all are projected to have first-round home games by High School OT, although none of the three are likely to get a seed that pleases their coaches, players and fans.

With the RPI system, wins are wins and losses and losses. A 50-0 win counts the same as a 3-0 win.

The RPI rankings don’t measure how badly you beat people, but they do measure how bad the people are that you beat.  It’s just math. All that is relevant is your winning percentage, the winning percentage of your opponents and the winning percentage of your opponents’ opponents.

Salisbury is a very good 2A team with an 8-1 record and it’s been blistering people, but with victories against three 2-7 teams and two 1-8 teams, the Hornets fare poorly in a ranking system based on strength of schedule. High School OT currently projects the Hornets for a No. 8 seed in the 32-team 2A West bracket. That’s about as low as a conference champ can go.

West is 7-2 and played a solid non-conference schedule, which helps some, but the Falcons didn’t win the South Piedmont Conference, so West will be seeded behind a long line of teams that either won 3A leagues or were the best 3A team in one of the split 2A/3A or 3A/4A conferences. High School OT currently projects West as a No. 14 seed in the 3A West bracket. That means a challenging, first-round home game in the playoffs, and then road trips if you make it past that first one.

North Rowan is in the same boat as the Falcons.

The Cavaliers play in the split 1A/2A Central Carolina Conference. Thomasville will get the best 1A seed from the CCC, which throws North into the stack of other qualifying teams that will be sorted out based on RPI. High School OT projects North to get a No. 13 seed.

Carson’s late surge and exciting wins against Concord and Central Cabarrus is going to lead to a playoff berth unless the Cougars falter against South.

Carson is projected for the No. 27 seed in the 3A West bracket. That’s going to mean a road game against a conference champion in the first round of the playoffs, but the Cougars will take it. The playoffs looked like a long-shot a three weeks ago. The Cougars stayed the course.

High School OT projects the Wonders for the No. 26 seed in the 4A West bracket. That’s going to mean a playoff road game against someone like Butler or Weddington, but the Wonders will be happy to be back in the playoffs. Coach Mike Newsome taking the Wonders to play Butler would be cool if that happens. He won state championships at Butler.

East Rowan (1-8, 1-4) at West Rowan (7-2, 4-1), 7 p.m.

Mackie Gallagher has signed up for PA duties. That alone might be worth the $7.

West has won the last seven meetings with the Mustangs, who clobbered the Falcons in Mount Ulla 59-14 in 2014 for their most recent win in the rivalry.

All-time, the Falcons lead 32-23-1.

It should be mentioned that West is taking aim at an unusual piece of county football history.

It’s unusual for a Rowan team to play all five of the other teams in the county, but West is doing so this year.

West plays in an eight-team conference, but Lake Norman Charter doesn’t compete in the South Piedmont Conference in football, so even with a 10-game limit, West was able to schedule North Rowan and Salisbury non-conference, while also facing Carson, South Rowan and East Rowan in SPC games.

No Rowan team has ever beaten the other five county schools in the same season. East is the last team standing in West’s way to accomplishing that feat.

Prior to Carson opening in 2006, there were some 4-0 “true” county sweeps, in which a team beat each of the other four schools.

But it’s a pretty short list. Many of the best teams in county history rolled in every county game they played, but didn’t get the chance to play everybody.

There were decade-long county winning streaks by Salisbury and West, but they didn’t get to play everyone very often.

• South, 1964. That was a 6-4 team, but it shut out West, North, East and Boyden.

• Salisbury, 1971. The Hornets allowed 6 points in four county games. They beat West 58-0.

• North, 1982. Lots of defense from the Cavaliers, who had a perfect regular season.

• North, 1998. A 27-14 win over East was the most challenging county game.

• West, 1999. The North game — 29-22 — was the toughest obstacle.

• South, 2000. A 31-24 OT win over a stout West team keyed a sweep.

• West, 2002. The Falcons were only 7-5, but they took care of the county in the early stages of their 44-game county winning streak.

• West, 2005. The Falcons had a county sweep in the books after the first five weeks of the season.

South Rowan (1-8, 0-5) at Carson (4-5, 3-2),
7 p.m.

Carson is coming off a double-overtime win for the ages against Central Cabarrus and has a lot of momentum.

Michael Guiton got banged up last week, so Emory Taylor may be at quarterback for the Cougars.

The key guy offensively for Carson should be Jordan Galarza. Teams have been able to run on the Raiders.

Carson thumped South in the spring and the fall in 2021 and leads the series 11-4. South’s most recent win came in 2016.

Salisbury (8-1, 5-0) at North Rowan (6-3, 3-2), 7:30 p.m.

Lots of star power, stats and records on the field in this one, with Salisbury’s JyMikaah Wells, Mike Geter and Deuce Walker and North Rowan’s trio of Jaemias Morrow, Amari McArthur and Jeremiah Alford.

Geter tweaked an ankle in Salisbury’s win against Lexington two weeks ago, but he should be ready to go. If not Hank Webb will step in and get the ball to Wells.

CCC champ Salisbury has played well and has won eight straight since looking shaky in the opener against West Rowan.

North has lost to West, East Davidson and Thomasville.

The losses to East Davidson and Thomasville were ugly and those are two teams the Hornets beat pretty soundly.

North tends to go as Morrow goes. He was shut down by East Davidson and Thomasville, but he’s run the ball very well against everyone else.

For the season he has 1,131 rushing yards, 18 rushing touchdowns and eight 2-point conversions. He’s also put the ball in the end zone on a reception, a fumble recovery and an interception return, and he has two kickoff return touchdowns.

Alford has a lot of rushing yards for a QB — 728 — and has scored 10 touchdowns himself. He’s thrown 14 TD passes. McArthur has eight receiving TDs.

North’s defense shut out Lexington last week and could be back on track. It will have to be for the Cavaliers to have a shot.

Wells is a punishing runner and has scored 22 TDs this season despite missing the South game and almost all of the East game with an ankle injury. He has a school-record 71 career touchdowns.

Wells has bumped his career rushing total to 4,834 yards, so it’s conceivable he’ll get to 5,000 tonight. He’s be only the third in county history to do that.

Geter has accounted for 23 touchdowns rushing and passing. Walker has 21 catches and six TDs.

A.L. Brown (5-4) at Concord (3-6), 7 p.m.

A rare non-conference season-ender, but the schools were able to work it out.

Lake Norman Charter not competing in SPC football helped make it doable.

Young QB CJ Gray has energized the Wonders, who nearly knocked off Mooresville, one of the state’s best, last week.

Concord fought hard against West Rowan and controlled the ball but took its sixth loss of the season when West scored in the last four minutes.

The Wonders lead one of the state’s most famous series by a 46-44-4 count. The Wonders had the distinction of smashing Concord twice in 2021 (28-0 in the spring, 47-0 in the fall) and they’ll look to add to a seven-game winning streak in the series.

Glenn (3-6, 2-4) at Davie (3-6, 2-4), 7 p.m.

The young men from Kernersville put up crazy offensive numbers against Davie in games in the spring and fall of 2021.

Glenn still appears to have the better defense, but Davie appears to have more firepower. This Central Piedmont Conference game should go down to the final minutes.