The Petal Panthers will head out on the road to take on the Gulfport Admirals at 7:00 p.m. on Friday. Petal is looking to tack on another W to their four-game streak on the road.
Petal is coming in fresh off a high-stakes matchup with another one of Mississippi's top teams: Oak Grove, who was ranked sixth in their home state at the time (Petal was ranked 17th). Petal fell just short of Oak Grove by a score of 24-21 on Thursday. The Panthers haven't had much luck with the Warriors recently, as the team's come up short the last four times they've met.
Meanwhile, winning is always nice, but doing so behind a season-high score is even better (just ask Gulfport). They simply couldn't be stopped on Thursday as they easily beat Harrison Central 49-21. The high-flying offensive performance was a huge turnaround for the Admirals considering their three-point performance the matchup before.
Gulfport's success was spearheaded by the efforts of Cooper Crosby, who rushed for 142 yards and two touchdowns on only 13 carries, and Dane Sullivan, who rushed for 70 yards and two touchdowns on only nine carries. Those 70 rushing yards gave Sullivan a new career-high. Gulfport also got help from Markell Simmons, who showed off his sure hands for 89 receiving yards.
Gulfport is on a roll lately: they've won four of their last five matches, which provided a nice bump to their 7-3 record this season. Those good results were due in large part to their defensive effort, having only surrendered 14.8 points per game. As for Petal, the loss snapped their winning streak at three games and leaves them with a 7-4 record.
Everything came up roses for Petal against Gulfport when the teams last played back in November of 2018, as the team secured a 34-0 win. Will Petal repeat their success, or does Gulfport have a new game plan this time around? We'll find out soon enough.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
