Camden County and North Gwinnett are out. Two five-loss teams are in.
That's the state of the Class AAAAA playoffs in Georgia, where only two of eight region champions –
Brookwood (Snellville) and
Lowndes (Valdosta) – have made it to the quarterfinals.
Click here to view MaxPreps' Georgia football playoff brackets.The most surprising upset came in Camden County, where the two-time defending champion Wildcats lost to a team that many around the Georgia coast had never heard of –
Hillgrove (Powder Springs), a five-year-old school from Cobb County in metro Atlanta.
Hillgrove was 9-2 entering the game and had won only two playoff games all-time, but the record was deceiving. One of the losses came when quarterback
Gage Henry was injured. Henry, who was right at 1,000 yards rushing and 2,000 yards passing on the season, was 20-for-28 passing for 166 yards in the game. Running back Kenyan Drake had 172 yards and two touchdowns rushing.
Camden's defense, which allowed 42 points in games against Central Miami and St. Thomas Aquinas, didn't play at a championship level this season.
"We were uncharacteristically bad tonight,'' Camden County coach Jeff Herron told the Florida Times-Union. "We had mental mistakes like we haven't had all year. Hillgrove … had a great effort. They were excited to be in the second round. I miss those days.''
Camden had won 11 straight playoff games.
Unlike Camden, which lost 28-26 in a back-and-forth game, North Gwinnett's game against
Grayson (Loganville) wasn't as close as the 23-19 final.
North Gwinnett committed four turnovers, and Grayson led 23-0 in the third quarter. Grayson's defense – which ranks No. 1 in scoring defense in AAAAA – wasn't going to let North Gwinnett back in the game. Grayson entered only 8-3, but was 35-5 over the previous three seasons.
Grayson also was a young team that needed time to replace several Division I-A recruits on defense. Defensive lineman
Robert Nkemdiche, one of Georgia's most impressive sophomores, had two sacks, two other tackles for loss and scored a touchdown.
"Everybody didn't expect us to win,'' Nkemdiche told the Gwinnett Daily Post. "We had maybe one or two fans that thought we could, but everyone else thought this was the last game.''
Predictions aren't going well statewide, at least not in the higher classifications. Nine of the 40 teams that have made the quarterfinals in Georgia's five classes have won two games on the road as lower-seeded teams. That's the most in history, or since the playoffs were expanded to 32 teams per class to include third- and fourth-place teams in 1996.
Four teams that finished fourth in their regions are still alive. They are
Lovett (Atlanta) and
Brooks County (Quitman), which will play each other in the first-ever Georgia playoff game between No. 4 seeds.
Mill Creek (Hoschton) and
Savannah Christian are the other two.
The two five-loss teams in AAAAA are Mill Creek and
Colquitt County (Moultrie). The only other five-loss teams in state history to get this far in the highest classification are East Coweta (2002) and Colquitt County (1997). Both won another round to the semifinals.
