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BARNWELL — Silver Bluff’s football team talked all week about last year.

It was this time a year ago that the Bulldogs were struggling to find their identity in year one under Matt Hayes, and with Hurricane Helene barreling toward South Carolina the annual rivalry clash against Barnwell was moved up a couple of nights to beat out any potential inclement weather.

The Warhorses were in vastly better shape coming into that game, and they took no mercy on their rivals in a 47-0 blowout that set a new record for margin of victory in the series.

A year later, Silver Bluff returned the favor.

The Bulldogs jumped all over the shorthanded Warhorses early and didn’t let up, threatening to set a new record for the biggest blowout in series history before settling for a 49-6 victory as both teams now get ready to begin region play.

“We had some really good practices; we stacked some really good days of practice. Guys are fired up. It’s a rivalry game,” Hayes said. “Records don’t mean anything. It’s Silver Bluff-Barnwell. I know the coaches over there have got a bunch of injuries. I was just proud of the way the guys came out. How we prepared Monday through Thursday showed on Friday.”

It took one offensive snap for Silver Bluff (3-3) to take the lead, with Drelyn Brown scoring from 56 yards out on first down after a Barnwell (2-4) punt.

He wasn’t done there. He scored from 73 yards out on the next series, then from 68 on the drive after that to surpass 200 yards on his first four carries. He finished the game with 219 yards and the three scores on only nine attempts, and he added a 10-yard receiving touchdown that made it 35-0 midway through the second quarter.

“He’s a special talent,” Hayes said. “Dre Brown buried his grandfather today, a guy he’s really close with, at 2 o’clock. He gets to the facility at 5 o’clock, gets on the bus and scores three out of the first four times he touches it. It just shows the type of human being he is, and he’s a great football player. He was playing for Pops tonight, and he had a little burst in his step. Any time we can get him into open space, only good things can happen. I’m excited for him, and I’m proud of him.”

Meanwhile, Barnwell, with quarterback Josiah Gibson and top running backs Jayden Peeples and Nehemiah Brown among the injured watching from the sideline, couldn’t string together first downs to mount anything resembling a scoring drive.

“We’re struggling. We’ve been run over on the side of the road, and the other cars are getting us right now,” Barnwell head coach Brian Smith said. “We’re hurt. We’re beat up a little bit. That’s not an excuse. We’ve got to get better. It starts with me. It starts with our kids. It starts with our coaching staff. We’ve got to all get better. Nobody cares that we’re hurt, and we’re not going to use that as an excuse.”

The Warhorses finished the game with just 122 rushing yards on 34 carries with one pass completion for five yards. Smith was pleased with the team’s effort in the second half, with the quarters reduced from 12 minutes to 8 with a running clock, and Henri Creech got into the end zone from 25 yards out on a fourth-down keeper to break up the shutout.

Creech, a tight end/linebacker-turned-emergency-quarterback, served as a vocal leader and coached up his teammates throughout the game, and he was the team’s leading rusher with 68 yards on 15 carries. Marcus Jacobs showed promise with 41 yards, with both taking direct snaps and driving right into the heart of the Silver Bluff defense.

“I’ll start with Henri. Henri has been very positive the whole way. Never played quarterback until last Monday,” Smith said. “We’ve got four quarterbacks now, and three of them never played quarterback until last Monday. Henri Creech has done a great job with that, offense, defense, not coming off the field.

“Marcus Jacobs is a 10th-grade running back that started the year and never thought he’d get a carry, and he’s getting a ton of them now and having to grow up fast. He’s going to make some young 10th-grade mistakes, but we’re going to continue to coach him to get him better so he’s better this year later in the year and better next year.”

Trellis Riley passed for 127 yards and two touchdowns, one to Brown and a 27-yarder to Jessie Shelley, and also rushed for an 18-yard touchdown. Shelley returned a punt 59 yards for a touchdown in the second quarter during a stretch of four Silver Bluff touchdowns in five plays.

The defense produced a turnover when Keshawn Taylor recovered a fumbled handoff, and the Bulldogs nearly had another from Keyaideen Williams. The touchdown was the lone blemish for the defense, and even that was with the game well out of reach.

“This game’s always about the line of scrimmage, both offensively and defensively,” Hayes said. “They do a lot of stuff with those multiple-player surfaces. We worked on pad level a lot this week, which is always good heading into region. I thought on both sides of the ball we were able to sustain the line of scrimmage. We play a lot of bodies up front, so that’s really good. We didn’t have a lot of guys going both ways. If you can develop depth on the defensive line and you can still hold up, moving forward into region play it’s going to be big for us.”

Silver Bluff opens Region 4-AAA play on Oct. 3 at Newberry, while Barnwell begins Region 5-AA play the same night at home against Lake Marion.

SB - Brown 73 run (Brittain kick) 2:44

SB - Brown 68 run (Brittain kick) 11:46