By Mike London
Salisbury Post
SALISBURY — Week 3 of the high school football season for Rowan County doesn’t provide much history or rivalry, but there still could be quite a bit of drama, as perennial underdogs South Rowan and East Rowan try to go 3-0 in the non-conference portion of the season.
East Rowan was a 21-point underdog at Pine Lake Prep, according to the Massey Ratings, last week, but managed to pull out a win in overtime. Carson was a substantial underdog at Mount Pleasant, but managed to win 35-32 in a back-and-forth thriller.
The Massey Ratings got the winners right, but weren’t particularly close to forecasting what happened in the games involving West Rowan, South Rowan, Salisbury and North Rowan.
Davie was a 1-point favorite over the Falcons, so technically that was a correct pick. But Davie won by 10 and led by more than that. West was down 17-0 at one point.
South Rowan was a 40-point favorite, but had to rally to win in the second half by 16 at Langtree Charter.
The Massey Ratings picked Salisbury by 28 over North. As fans of both schools know, the Hornets were thrilled to get a four-point win.
Even if you own a crystal ball, this will not be an easy week for anyone to predict as there are four — yes, four — first-time match-ups: Trinity at South Rowan; Lake Norman Charter at North Rowan; Walkertown at West Rowan, and Pine Lake Prep at Carson.
East Rowan makes the trip to Union County to take on Piedmont, a program it hasn’t faced since Piedmont was in the South Piedmont Conference back in 2000.
Salisbury plays Oak Grove for only the fourth time.
Carson’s ground-and-pound win at Mount Pleasant impressed the heck out of the Massey Ratings. The Cougars (1-1) are favored by 28 at home against the PLP team that took East Rowan to OT last week.
Is Carson really that much better than East? Maybe the Cougars are. We’ll see.
Anyway, PLP (0-2) is given a 4 percent chance of beating Carson, about the same chance as snow in China Grove on Friday.
West Rowan is favored by six at home to bounce back against Walkertown, but this is obviously expected to be a tussle in Mount Ulla. The Falcons are given a 59 percent win probability. The score projection is an exciting 34-28. You may remember Walkertown played Salisbury twice last season and won once.
North Rowan has put up mighty yardage totals, but has lost exciting games to rivals West Rowan and Salisbury, Now North welcomes Lake Norman Charter to the Spencer Airport.
Lake Norman Charter was a South Piedmont Conference member in most sports the last four seasons, but the Knights didn’t compete in that league in football — they played a completely different schedule so it’s hard to say how good Lake Norman Charter football is.
The Knights (1-1) became 4A with the new reclassification as they have 800-plus students. but it’s unlikely any of those 800 can cover A’son Best or catch Jojo Tarver. The Cavaliers are favored by the Massey Ratings by eight points and have a 64 percent win probability.
Another first-time matchup is Trinity (0-2) at South Rowan.
Trinity played in the South Piedmont Conference in the 1973-76 football seasons, taking on South’s neighbors such as A.L. Brown and Concord, but didn’t encounter South, which switched from the SPC to the North Piedmont Conference for those four years.
Trinity has scored seven points in two games. South has 560 rushing yards in two games.
That’s why South is favored over the Bulldogs by 27 points and is given a 93 percent win probability.
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East Rowan is a three-TD underdog at Piedmont (1-1), although that fact is unlikely to faze the Mustangs, who also were three-TD underdogs before they won on the road last week. East is given only a 12 percent chance to win by the Massey Ratings, but East’s chances appear to be better than that.
East’s defense is playing well. If the offense has a good night, 3-0 is possible.
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Oak Grove (1-1) at Salisbury (1-1) could wind up being the game of the night, but the Hornets are 20-point underdogs, according to the Massey Ratings.
Oak Grove beat the Hornets during their state championship season — the 2020 season that was delayed until the spring of 2021 by COVID. That was the last meeting. The Grizzlies also beat Salisbury in 2019. The Hornets beat Oak Grove in the first meeting of the schools in 2018.
Oak Grove opened in 2017, drawing students from North Davidson and Ledford.
Oak Grove smashed Ledford 49-0 on opening night, but lost to Reagan 7-6 last week.
