Prep notebook: Georgetown, Myrtle Beach going for milestone wins Friday

The lone remaining area football teams are going for a bit of history on Friday.

While it pales in comparison to what a win for Myrtle Beach or Georgetown would do for each team’s championship hopes, the two teams are each going for their 10th win of the season. That’s something Myrtle Beach has done every year since Mickey Wilson took over the program in 2009.

At Georgetown, it would be a first since the Bulldogs’ program was combined from the Winyah and Howard teams for the 1982 season.

“We’ve come a long, long ways, without a doubt, over just a six-year stretch,” Bulldogs coach Bradley Adams said. “We hardly had players who were completing practice and didn’t understand what we were trying to do. They’re buying into what we were trying to instill over the last six years. It’s taken a little bit of time to build it. We feel like we’ve got the building blocks in place.”

Prior to this year’s nine victories, the most Georgetown had in any single season was eight, something the Bulldogs accomplished three times, according to SCFootballHistory.com. By comparison, the website credits the team with five seasons of 10 losses.

But the historical perspective is of little surprise given Georgetown has won two playoff games in the same year this fall for the first time ever.

“Personally, I don’t think our team is focusing on how many wins we have. We’re hungry to reach the next day and the next week,” said Adams, who won his school-best 40th career game last week.

For Myrtle Beach, plenty of regular-season success and deep postseason runs have Wilson’s all-time record standing at 78-17. That’s an average of more than 11 wins per year.

The Seahawks’ streak of 10-win seasons actually stretches back to 2006 under then-coach Scott Earley. The nine-year streak is second in the state to only Byrnes and Dillon, which both have accomplished the double-digit win total every year since 2001.

“Any time you’re mentioned with Byrnes and Dillon, that’s definitely a compliment,” Wilson said. “It’s not something we think about or worry about, necessarily. [The 10-win streak is] just an indication of some really good assistant coaches and some really good football players.”

The fact that two teams in Region VII-AAA could be 10-win teams by the end of the week also isn’t necessarily an anomaly.

In 2013, Myrtle Beach won 11 games en route to a Class AAA state championship. That same year, Socastee went 12-1 and advanced to the third round of the playoffs. It was the Braves’ final season before moving up to Class AAAA.

Additionally that year, North Myrtle Beach was 9-3 and advanced to the second round.

Two years later, a pair of squads have already guaranteed themselves nine wins, with the possibility of more to come.

“If we are able to have two 10-win teams, that shows something that I’ve said all along – I think the coaching in our region is so strong,” Adams said. “There’s no reason that we shouldn’t be in that situation with the amount of work that we do.”

PLAYOFF NOTES

▪ Adams said that while he and the coaching staff have been playing it safe with star quarterback Jarvis Brown of late, there will be no holding back this week at Midland Valley.

“At times when we’ve tried to turn Jarvis loose, he gets banged up,” Adams said. “All things are off. He’s going to work. That’s what we’re going to do.”

Brown, a senior, leads the area in total touchdowns with 36 through 12 games. That includes 26 passing touchdowns and 10 more on the ground. All told, he has more than 3,000 total yards.

And even though 550 of those have come via rushing, there haven’t been as many carries of late. In two of the last three games, Brown has had six or fewer carries. He’s averaged nearly 10 per game throughout much of the season.

▪ Myrtle Beach enters its third-round game against Hartsville having put up some big numbers in recent home playoff games. Since 2012, the Seahawks have averaged 40.9 points per game at Doug Shaw Memorial Stadium during the postseason. That includes last week’s 63-point outburst against Hilton Head, the second-highest point total during that span.

Only Marlboro County held Myrtle Beach under 35 points; that happened last year in the Bulldogs’ 42-10 win and a 20-6 Myrtle Beach victory in 2013.

▪ The two games this week feature six players who could be at Doug Shaw on Dec. 12 for the Touchstone Energy Cooperatives Bowl, North vs. South all-star football event. Myrtle Beach’s Drayton Arnold and Brandon Sinclair, Hartsville’s Riquan Cotton and Eddie Martin and Midland Valley’s Xavier Leaphart and Daniel Carr were among the 44 players selected to play for the South team.

However, odds are that two of those players will need to be replaced. The Class AAA state championship game will be played that same day. Any players from title-contending teams will have their spots on the all-star roster filled by pre-selected alternates.

This story was originally published November 23, 2015 at 4:17 PM with the headline "Prep notebook: Georgetown, Myrtle Beach going for milestone wins Friday."