EMCC Lions to open two-game road stretch with Thursday’s division battle at Northeast
Coming off the MACCC’s bye week, the Lions of East Mississippi Community College will begin a road-heavy month of October on the gridiron by heading to Booneville to take on the Northeast Mississippi Tigers during Thursday’s MACCC North Division action. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. at Tiger Stadium on the NEMCC campus.
SCOOBA – Coming off the MACCC's bye week, the Lions of East Mississippi Community College will begin a road-heavy month of October on the gridiron by heading to Booneville to take on the Northeast Mississippi Tigers during Thursday's MACCC North Division action. Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. at Tiger Stadium on the NEMCC campus.
Prior to last week's conference-wide bye week, the EMCC Lions (2-3, 1-2 MACCC North) picked up a much-needed 62-14 homecoming victory over Coahoma on Sept. 28 after dropping previous division decisions at Northwest Mississippi (33-14 on Sept. 14) and at home to Itawamba (36-34 on Sept. 19). The two-time reigning MACCC champions kicked off their current campaign by bouncing back with a 43-3 road win over Hinds (Sept. 5) after falling, 34-28, to Mississippi Gulf Coast in their season opener played in Scooba (Aug. 29).
With three road games in four October contests, EMCC is set to play away from home again next week (Oct. 17) at Pearl River before closing out the regular season with division matchups against Mississippi Delta (Oct. 24 in Scooba) and Holmes (Oct. 31 in Goodman).
Most recently, East Mississippi remained unbeaten in homecoming contests and in their series history against Coahoma during the Buddy Stephens coaching era by posting a 48-point, mercy-rule triumph over the visiting Tigers. EMCC outgained Coahoma, 546-181, in total offense yards and 32-11 on first downs in the contest. Individually for the Lions, reigning NJCAA Division I Offensive Player of the Year Ty Keyes was 22-of-28 through the air for 342 passing yards, five touchdowns and an interception in the CCC contest. In addition against the Tigers, Raymon Blackmon compiled the most receiving yards (155 yds & 2 TDs on 9 catches) by an EMCC player in a single game since Kirk Merritt totaled 180 receiving yards on seven grabs during the Lions' 47-34 season-opening home win over Jones in 2017.
In his 13th season on Northeast Mississippi's football staff and 10th year as head coach, Greg Davis' Tigers are also 2-3 overall on the year and 1-2 in division play heading into Thursday's contest against EMCC. Though with only one common opponent between them thus far on the season, Northeast's win-loss sequence to date has followed suit with EMCC's opening five-game slate. The Tigers bounced back from a season-opening 23-14 home setback to East Central with a 49-30 home triumph over Southwest Mississippi. Following division losses to Holmes (41-7 in Booneville) and Northwest (28-20 in Senatobia), Northeast most recently got back on track with a 20-14 victory at Mississippi Delta last Thursday in a contest previously postponed from Sept. 12 due to Hurricane Francine.
In his 17th season as head coach of the Lions, EMCC's Stephens owns a 13-2 career record against Northeast Mississippi (7-1 in Scooba & 6-1 in Booneville). Last year (Oct. 21, 2023) in a homecoming matchup featuring a pair of top-15 teams, the home-standing Lions grabbed the upper hand in the MACCC North Division standings with a hard-fought 38-31 victory over the visiting Tigers on the way to claiming their 11th division title dating back to 2008. Two years ago (Oct. 13, 2022), in the most recent Booneville meeting between the two teams, visiting EMCC was slowed by seven turnovers (four lost fumbles and three interceptions) and without the services of four defensive starters due to injury en route to dropping a 31-21 decision to Northeast and snapping the Lions' previous 10-game series win streak against the Tigers.
Thursday's EMCC-NEMCC contest will be broadcast live by WFCA-FM (107.9), out of French Camp, with Jason Crowder and Glen Beard slated to provide the play-by-play and color commentary, respectively. Brad Logan is set to handle sideline reporting duties. The game's live-streamed audio will also be carried by EMCC's campus radio station, WGTC-FM (92.7), originating from the Golden Triangle campus in Mayhew. Along with EMCC's weekly live video-streamed football broadcasts being available in HD at emcclive.com, alternate audio streams of the Lions' radio broadcasts throughout the football season will also be accessible via wfca.fm.
