By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

As the prep football season across South Mississippi moved into the month of October, it’s time for our seventh installment of “Friday Night Rewind” here at SouthMiss6 Sports.

“Friday Night Rewind” has been a part of the journalistic fabric of prep football across the “Southern Six” for most of the past three decades. Each week of the season on Sunday we’ll take a look back at the action that took place all across this region the previous week.

Here are seven things we noticed in the “Southern 6” Friday night:

1. Hornets Sting — Poplarville began defense of its Region 8-4A crown with a 28-14 road win over home-standing Moss Point at Dantzler Stadium. Still without the services of Bell Cow tailback Tylan Keys, who has missed the entire season with an injury, the Hornets continue to apply the running back by committee approach and this week they got over 140 yards rushing and three short rushing touchdowns from Thomas Lambert in a game played through inclement weather conditions. Poplarville is now 5-1 overall, and Moss Point dropped to 0-6 overall despite getting both a touchdown run and a scoring pass from senior quarterback Ke/Von Ford. In the other Region 8-4A opener, Greene County slipped past home-standing Pass Christian 33-25.
2. Tigers Toppled — And speaking of Region 8-4A, Bay High had the lone open slot in the first wek of league play so the Tigers took a trip to Hattiesburg to face Presbyterian Christian and dropped a 34-14 decision to the MAIS member Bobcats. Bay High has now lost five straight games since a season-opening win over Resurrection with league play set to begin this week. The meeting was just the second ever between the two teams after a 40-18 home win for the Tigers last year.
3. Roll Tide Roll — Picayune pushed past Petal 24-21 in a hard-fought game in Forrest County as the Maroon Tide finished the non-region part of their schedule at 4-2. It marked the second straight three-point win over a Class 7A foe on the road for Picayune, after slipping by Ocean Springs 38-35 the previous week. Allen Magee caught two touchdown passes from Brandon Parker and Darrell Smith ran for 178 yards and one touchdown to pace Picayune offensively.
4. Gator Frenzy — Gautier held off visiting Columbia in an exciting 42-41 outing in the last game before Region 4-5A play starts for the Gators. Gator senior quarterback Trey Irving accounted for five total touchdowns, three on the ground and two more via air, including the final two Gautier scores after the Gators trailed 35-28 to pull out the win. The Gautier defense stood tall and denied the Wildcats on a two-point conversion attempt with :05 seconds to play to secure the one-point win.
5. Wounded Rebels — Recent Auburn commit Deuce Knight sat out his third straight game for George County and the Rebels fell to 3-3 overall with a closer-than-it-looked 48-21 loss to home-standing Hattiesburg at D.I. Patrick Stadium. The Rebels started the year off with a bang at 2-0, before the senior signal-caller Knight was injured early in a loss to Biloxi and GCHS has gone 1-2 in his absence with Region 4-6A play on the horizon later this week. The game pitted two of the three quarterbacks picked for Team Mississippi in the prestigious Alabama/Mississippi All-Star Football Classic in December, and Hattiesburg’s Deuce Vance has gotten his Tigers off to an impressive 6-0 start.
6. Warriors Cruise — Home-standing D’Iberville thumped Wayne County 35-7, and for the first time in three years the Warriors head into region play with a winning record at 3-2. It also marks the first time under the guidance of head coach Josh Ladner that DHS goes into league play with a winning mark. Sophomore quarterback Jordan Walley accounted for three touchdowns, one on the ground and two through the air, in the win for the Warriors as D’Iberville scored all of its points in the first half to put the game away early. Andre Crosby added 100 yards rushing and a touchdown run for the winning Warriors.
7. Tough Tomcats — Thanks to a stout defensive unit, Stone has won two of its past three games after a 32-0 dismantling of visiting St. Stanislaus at A.L. May Stadium on the campus of Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Perkinston. Zander Howard threw two touchdown passes to K.J. Galloway while Ky’lan Burnett and Ayden Green each ran for over 100 yards and combined for a trio of touchdowns on the ground in the winning effort. It marked the first shutout of the year for the Tomcat defense, which despite sitting at 2-3 on the season is allowing only an average of 12 points per game and has yielded as many as 20 points just once so far and that came in a 20-19 loss to Quitman last week.