Each Week following Spartanburg Viking Football games, I’m going to take a couple of days and think about the 3 most important things I saw on the field. Some good, some great, some not so good. I’ll try to break through what mattered, and what not to overreact to. So here’s 3 things from Week 0’s 26-25 win over South Pointe.
1-Winning Plays! The Vikings made winning plays all throughout the 2nd half. Let’s go back to last year with all of the close loses late in games when we had the ball driving for the win and came up short. While the stat sheet won’t blow anyone’s socks off, the Vikings had a strong 2nd half with big play after big play on offense, defense and special teams. We put pressure on their QB, pressure on their punter, and pressure on their LBs to make plays late. We blocked kicks, forced TOs, returned kicks for TDs, and hit big passes when we needed to. We came up big in all 3 areas in the 2nd half. Shout outs to Quincy Heywood, Calvin Edwards Choice, Cam Smith and CJ Woodruff…all who made monster plays in the win.
2-We have the best Kicker in the State. Will Love is special and we’re 0-1 without him. A school record 51 yard FG, a 49 yard FG, 2 punts inside the 10, 5 touchbacks, and a game winning FG with 10 seconds left. In the first half, we couldn’t get anything going on offense, but we weren’t down 13-0…it was 13-9 thanks to Love. He was terrific, so much so that after the game, several South Pointe fans came up to me as I was walking to the car to acknowledge Will Love. He was tremendous and will be a real weapon all season that so many others won’t have.
3-We’re beat up. Poor Justin Rice wants to go every single play but just can’t. Trenton Lynch wants to go every single play but just can’t. TJ Johnson won’t play for a few weeks. Don Kinard has been out. We did have a few guys like Trey Weathers go and you saw Quez Smith take a beating during the game. But we battled and battled against a team with 3 division 1 guys and a whole bunch of guys who will play on Saturdays somewhere….all while on the road. It won’t get easier this week against Dutch Fork, but we need to get healthy..fast.
