Demopolis hosting powerful Thomasville team

While Demopolis will resume its most storied rivalry Friday night, it will also be challenged with overcoming a Thomasville team eager to rebound from back-to-back losses.

The visiting Tigers have dropped consecutive games for the first time since week two of the 2008 season. Those losses, to UMS-Wright and Andalusia, have come by a total of four points.

“I don’t know if there is a formula (for beating Thomasville),” Demoplis head coach Tom Causey said. “It was two different games, two different offenses. They’ve lost two games by a total of four points to two pretty good football teams. Just some bad breaks have not gone their way in the fourth quarter. Sometimes you get like that. We’ve been snake bit like that with injuries. Sometimes there is nothing you can do or not do and it is going to happen. I know Thomasville played well enough to win both those games It is just four points difference in being 4-0 and being 2-2. They are that good of a football team.”

Thomasville will enter Friday’s contest having given up just under 17 points a game while averaging 35.5 point of their own.

THS has found its success in 2013 much the same as it has throughout the Jack Hankins era, a period that has seen the Tigers use a physical defense and a punishing ground game.

“They like to run the football. They want to star with the run. They want to end it with the run and they’re dang good at it,” Causey said. “They play good defense. They swarm to the football. They’ve got dang good athletes at every position and they coach the mess out of them.”

Thomasville Wing-T attack had led to the emergence of star running back Zavier Mapp, who has established himself as both a big-play threat and a runner capable of serving as the proverbial bell cow for the THS offense.

“He’s a big, strong, explosive back. He has been putting up big numbers because he’s really good at what he does,” Causey said of Mapp. “Their offensive line is huge. They’ve got a 6-7, 280-pound kid playing one tackle. They’ve got a center that is 6-4, 290. They’ve got another 290-pound tackle on the other side and both guards are about 275. The tight end is about 250. So they really mash it up in there and Mapp runs in behind them. What they do is good and they are good at it.”

As for Causey’s Tigers, Demopolis enters off a rebound win of its own against Selma that came a week after a loss to Saraland.

“We got better at a little bit of everything. We’ve still got a long way to go in everything that we’re doing,” Causey said. “We’re still working on character. We’re still working on team and we’re still working on the little things.”

Demopolis is averaging just under 28 points per game while allowing only 12.5 points per contest.

Demopolis is scheduled to host Thomasville Friday nigh in a game that kicks off at 7 p.m.