Veteran sportswriter and high school football expert Robert Wilson is doing the Priority One Bank/Mississippi Scoreboard predictions column each week during the high school football season on teams from Hinds, Madison, and Rankin County. Wilson had a 21-8 record (72.4 percent) last week and has a 60-16 record (78.9 percent) this season. 

Jackson Academy (3-0) at Jackson Prep (2-0), Friday, 7 p.m. (raidernetwork.org and jacksonprep.live)

Billy and Christy Quin are getting ready for Quin Bowl II Friday night.

For the second straight year, their son, Major, and their daughter, Caroline, will on opposite sides when two rival high schools meet in football. Major, who has verbally committed the Air Force Academy, is a senior on the Prep football team and the only player who starts on both offense (slot receiver) and defense (cornerback). He also an outfielder on Prep’s baseball. Caroline is a junior and a featured tumbler on the JA cheerleading squad. She also the goalkeeper on JA’s soccer team.

       The Quins are an example of several parents who have children at both Prep and JA. This has been going on since the schools started playing each other in the 1980s when JA became a large enough school to compete with Prep. Prep leads the series 43-16 and it’s a unique rivalry where players, coaches, fans, and alumni are from the same family, go to church together and live in the same neighborhood. Some Prep players’ parents graduated from JA and some JA players’ parents graduated from Prep.

       Prep has owned this series lately. The Patriots have won 14 of the last 15 meetings. JA’s only win during that string was in 2020 when JA scored 21 points in the fourth quarter to defeat Prep 28-21 in the Class 6A state semifinals in former National Coach of the Year and Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame member Ricky Black’s last game at Prep.

       In last year’s game, kicker Eli Adams made a 20-yard field goal, quarterback Billy Puckett ran for one touchdown and passed for one TD to Quin to give Prep a 17-0 lead with 6 minutes to play.

JA made dramatic comeback, driving 80 yards – the big play a 38-yard pass from quarterback Carter Mathison to wide receiver Bo Barbour to the Prep 29 – for its first score on a 2-yard shuffle pass to DJ Watkins to AJ Parker with 3:11 to play. JA recovered an onside kick and drove down for a 32-yard field goal by Jacob Scarbrough to cut the lead to 17-10 with 2:17 to play. Then, JA held Prep on downs and got the ball back at the Prep 48 with 1 minute to play, but three incomplete passes and a fumble ended JA’s chances with 32 seconds to play and Prep ran out the clock.

Puckett completed 14 of 25 passes for 217 yards and ran eight times for 28 yards. 

JA running back Omerean Ellis came into the game as MAIS Class 6A’s most productive runner with 44 carries for 522 yards (an average of 11.8 yards per carry) and seven TDs. But Prep’s defense slowed down Ellis and he finished with only 17 yards on nine carries in the first half and was out with an injury in the second half. 

Prep’s defense, led by longtime coordinator Nick Brewer (who has been a part of 13 state championships), had an outstanding performance even without talented linebacker Tre Bryant, the son of former NFL kicker Matt Bryant and a transfer from Orange Beach High. Bryant had shoulder surgery the week of the game and missed the rest of the season.

JA had averaged 44.3 points in wins over Class 5A Leake Academy, Pillow Academy and Silliman, La., over the past three weeks before the Prep game.

JA’s defense – with four players with Division I offers (led by defensive tackle Dereon Albert) – held Prep without a touchdown and 115 total yards in the first half. But JA couldn’t generate enough offense until late in the game to make a run at Prep.

Many of those same players are back for this year’s game.

Prep has 13 returning starters from last year’s 10-4 team, which lost to Hartfield Academy 21-0 for the 6A state championship. 

The Patriots has two of the three top senior offensive tackles in Mississippi in Matthew Parker (6-8, 315 pounds), a Baylor commitment, and Cole Allen (6-6, 265 pounds), a Duke commitment. Parker is rated No. 20 and Allen No. 21 in the Class of 2025 in Mississippi by 247 Sports. Only Tyler Miller of Laurel (rated No. 6) is ranked higher than Parker and Allen among offensive tackles. Parker has 25 Division I offers, including Power 5 schools Vanderbilt, Duke and Florida State. Allen has 19 Division I offers. 

Other offensive starters are Puckett, Quin, left tackle Robert Watson, left guard Reid Vineyard, center Thomas Coco (son of head of school Lawrence Coco), and tailback Thomas Hewitt Oswalt.

       The returning starters on defense are Quin, senior outside linebackers Laird Johnson and Turner Reeves (nephew of Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves), senior inside linebacker Will McMaster, and senior tackle Stuart Grubbs.

JA’s top returning starter is 6-foot-3, 295-pound junior defensive lineman Dereon Albert – who has 12 Division I offers, including SEC offers from Auburn, LSU, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas A&M.

Other key returning starters are senior running back Omarean “Man-Man” Ellis, junior quarterback Carter Mathison, senior wide receiver-kickoff returner John Thomas, junior linebacker TJ White, senior linebacker-kicker Jacob Scarborough, senior offensive lineman Shamrye Lee, and senior defensive back Foster Meachum. Meachum is out with a season-ending elbow injury.

JA was missing a pair of Division I prospects recovering from injuries. Sophomore offensive lineman Caden Moss (6-4, 260 pounds) is rated the No. 9 player in the country and the No. 1 offensive tackle in the country in the Class of 2027 by 247 Sports and has Division I offers from Ole Miss, MSU, Tennessee, Akron and New Mexico State. Senior defensive back and Wesson High transfer O’Mari Johnson is rated the No. 11 player in Mississippi in the Class of 2026 by 247 Sports and has nine Division I offers, including seven from the SEC.

Both teams have experienced coaches.

Prep coach Doug Goodwin has won 259 games in his 30-year head coaching career, including a 25-5 record in his third season at Prep. He led Prep to a 12-1 record and the MAIS Class 6A state title in his first season at Prep two years ago. Goodwin brought the Patriots back from the most losses since the first year of the school in 1970 (an 8-5 record in 2022). He won 234 games in 27 seasons in Alabama, is a member of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame and was the first football coach in Alabama to take three different schools to state championship games. Goodwin led Demopolis to an undefeated season and a state title and set a state record with 761 points in 2008. He also had four state runner-up finishes.

JA has a new head coach in longtime college assistant coach David Duggan.

The 60-year-old Massachusetts native and University New Hampshire graduate was defensive coordinator at JA two years ago with head coach Aubrey Blackwell. After a year as defensive coordinator at Kent State, Duggan had had enough of the 24-7 college scene these days and was hired after Blackwell, an Alabama native, left to take the head coaching job at Saint James School in Montgomery, Ala. He was at JA for two seasons and had a 17-9 record. Blackwell, who had coached in Alabama all his life before coming to JA, previously had coached at St. James.

Southern Miss football fans are familiar with Duggan.

       He coached under Larry Fedora at Southern Miss from 2008 to 2011, then followed Fedora to North Carolina, then came back to Southern Miss and coached under Todd Monken from 2013-2016. Duggan was linebackers every year while at Southern Miss and also served as special teams coordinator (2009-11), co-defensive coordinator (2011) and defensive coordinator (2013-2016).

       Duggan’s goal is to bring back a state championship to JA, something the Raiders haven’t won since the three-peat from 2009 to 2011 under David Sykes. JA has been to one state title game since 2013, losing to Madison-Ridgeland Academy in 2020.

       JA should stay in the game for the first half, but Prep’s depth (the Patriots will dress out more than 80 players compared to JA’s less than 50) will be the difference in the second half.

Jackson Prep 24, Jackson Academy 10.

 In other games (winners in bold):

Brandon (2-0) at Clinton (1-1)

Callaway (1-1) at Terry (2-0)

Canton (1-1) at Provine (0-2), Hughes Field

Clinton Christian Academy (1-3) at McAdams (0-2)

Central Hinds Academy (2-1) at Bowling Green, La. (1-3)

Discovery Christian (1-2) at Prentiss Christian (0-3)

East Rankin Academy (1-3) at Simpson Academy (0-3)

Florence (1-1) at Holmes County Central (2-0)

Forest Hill (1-1) at Murrah (2-0), Saturday, 10 a.m., Hughes Field

Gulfport (2-0) at Madison Central (1-1)

Hartfield Academy (3-0) at Presbyterian Christian (3-0)

Hazlehurst (1-1) at Lanier (2-0), South Jackson Field

 Jim Hill (0-2) at Tylertown (1-1)

 Lake (0-2) at Pelahatchie (1-1)

 MRA (3-1) at Madison St. Joseph (1-1)

Northwest Rankin (1-1) at Ocean Springs (0-2)

 Park Place Christian (2-1) at Hillcrest Christian (1-2)

Pearl (1-1) at Brookhaven (2-0)

 Pisgah (2-0) at Sebastapol (2-0)

 Puckett (2-0) at West Lincoln (0-2)

 Richland (0-2) at McLaurin (1-1)

 Ridgeland (2-0) at North Pike (1-1) 

St. Andrew’s (1-1) at Sacred Heart (2-0)

South Pike (2-0) at Raymond (0-2)

Tri-County Academy (3-0) at St. Aloysius (0-3)

Warren Central (1-1) at Germantown (2-0)