The veteran North coach says CCC leader HighPoint Central (3-0, 7-0), the state’s No. 1-ranked 2A team, is the obvious favorite, but adds, “The rest of us are fighting it out over second and third right now. Ledford’s one of the better teams, and we’d like to think that on a good night, we’re a pretty good team. And East Davidson’s a pretty good team.”

Ledford is in second place at 2-0, followed by East Davidson at 2-1 and North and Lexington at 1-1.

Secreast thinks the second-place battle is between Ledford, his North team (3-4 overall) and East Davidson.

“This was a pivotal game as far as the playoffs are concerned,” he said. “Ledford has a big game coming up this week with East Davidson. The outcome of their game is crucial to us too. We hope Ledford wins, because that helps us. If East Davidson wins, that doesn’t help us much. Now Ledford or East Davidson has to lose two times, and we have to win the rest and make sure we’re ahead of them.”

East Davidson’s only loss so far in the seven-team league was to unbeaten High Point Central. North visits Central on Oct. 22. Ledford closes out its regular season Nov. 5 on the road at High Point.

The Cavaliers play Lexington at home next week before meeting HighPoint. North Rowan hosts North Stanly on Oct. 29. If the Cavaliers win two of those three games, that would make their Nov. 5 game at East Davidson a possible battle for the league’s No. 3 playoff berth.

It took the Hornets only three rushing plays (which netted minus 2 yards) to figure out that it was going to be difficult — maybe impossible — to move the ball on the ground against High Point in Friday’s 42-12 loss.

That prompted the Hornets to go from the shotgun formation on almost every snap the rest of the game. QBTerry Johnson was forced to do a pretty fair impression of North Rowan’s Mario Sturdivant, launching 30 passes to all corners of the field.

Johnson had only 11 completions, but could have easily had 15 if his receivers had been able to hang on to some catchable balls.

“What I liked was that Terry threw the ball at 10 different people,” said Salisbury coach Raymond Daugherty. “He played his butt off. All our kids did.”

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NOWAYOUT: Most of the talk coming into the Salisbury-Central game centered around the Bison’s speedy tailback Chuckie Reed, an All-State candidate.

The Hornets “held” Reed to 100 yards on 16 carries, but his running mate — fullback Rickey Haywood — exploded for 248 yards on 25 carries, mostly by running through stacks of Hornets in the middle of the field.

“He was really good,” said Salisbury linebacker Ken Drye. “Sometimes we overpursued and he ran by us. Other times, we just didn’t wrap him up. A back like that, you have to wrap up.”

“When they play us, teams have to pick their poison,” said confident Bison coach Gary Whitman. “Salisbury did some good things to hold down Reed outside but that pretty much opened up things for Haywood.”

The 21 points scored by Kannapolis in Friday night’s win over West Rowan marked the lowest offensive output for the Wonders since 1998’s quarterfinal 26-21 loss to Kings Mountain.

The Falcons defense held the Wonders to 69 yards of total offense in the first half. Star running back Marcello Stanback, averaging 119 yards a game, was limited to 36 yards on 12 carries. Quarterback Justin Hardin, averaging 113 passing yards a game with 12 touchdowns and only two interceptions, was 3-for-6 for 28 yards. The strong West defensive effort led to a 7-7 halftime tie.

“We held them to 70 yards in the first half — to do that to the No. 1 team in the state …” said senior defensive lineman Jason Fink said. “In the third quarter we came out and held them, but we gave up the big play in the fourth quarter.”

“It was really great. In my opinion we played with them for all four quarters,”quarterback Jared Barnette said. “The defense played its heart out and the offense did really good.”

Concord awaits for West’s next big test. The Falcons then close the season with Piedmont, Sun Valley andCentral Cabarrus.

West will have to play with the remaining four as well to earn one of three SPC playoff berths. Kannapolis leads the way with a perfect record, while Concord and Northwest Cabarrus each have one loss. Only Harding and Piedmont, at 0-5, are out of the playoff picture.

Wonders quarterback Justin Hardin doesn’t throw in Ryan Craft’s direction very often but the results are usually pretty good when he does.

In his last four games, Craft has caught only four passes (one in each game), but each of the aerials has been good for a touchdown.

For the season, Craft has 11 catches and five TDs. He has caught a scoring pass in five straight games.

Craft, who goes both ways, has also contributed two interceptions as a cornerback.

Davie coach Doug Illing thought he was cursed last year when eight different War Eagles suffered knee injuries.

The bad knees have not gone away this season either.

Defensive end Bradford Ivey was back in Friday night’s 28-21 overtime win against West Forsyth after missing a game with a strained MCL and drew praise from West Forsyth coach Russell Stone.

Quarterback Drew Ridenhour is playing on a partially-torn ACL but had his best game of the season against West, throwing for 203 yards.

And Ricky White, who now has two bum knees, still had 100 yards rushing while going over the 1,000-yard mark for the season.

North Stanly’s disappointing season continued Friday night with a 37-20 loss to East Davidson, but the Comets at least can boast that they have one of the state’s top punters in Wes Herlocker.

Herlocker, who has verbally committed to East Carolina, was averaging 44.5 yards per kick after his first 24 punts this season.

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