It’s not that Chapel Hill’s offense looked bad last Friday. It’s just that CHHS head coach Issac Marsh is sure his team can play so much better.

Marsh gave the Tigers an earful after their 21-20 overtime win against South Granville, but much of the talk was aimed at making sure his players knew what they needed to do to improve.

"We all will get better, and we will be able to execute better than we did tonight," Marsh said later. "But I’m still happy for the guys to get a win. They worked hard for it."

Both of South Granville’s touchdowns were set up by Chapel Hill mistakes —a facemask penalty that reversed a Chapel Hill fumble recovery and gave the ball to South Granville at the Tigers’ 5-yard line, and a Viking fumble recovery inside the Chapel Hill 10.

While Chapel Hill’s defense look solid — holding South Granville’s super-back Josh Bailey to a relatively modest 108 yards and stopping him completely when it counted in OT – the Tiger offense played just well enough to win.

Alex Duncan caught two touchdown passes from T.J. Johnson, but Johnson completed only eight of 17 passes for 80 yards, albeit many of his incompletions came late as he forced the ball downfield in a hurry-up offense. Speedy Darius Allen was limited to 51 yards on 14 rushes.

"We’re going to be okay," Marsh said. "It was just the first game, and we still have to get going — get Darius and T.J. up to speed."

"A lot of what happened had to do with the fact we were playing a very good team. South Granville has a very solid football program, and they were strong tonight."

It’s a simple game

While East Chapel Hill coach Bill Renner was just plain happy to get a win last Friday at East Wake, he was really happy about the way his Wildcats did it.

"I thought our guys did a great," Renner said last weekend. "What I was glad about was that they just played the game. We didn’t worry about if we did something bad or if we did something good; we just paid attention to what we were supposed to be doing on each play."

Last Friday’s 14-13 win marked the second time in three years that East Chapel Hill opened its season with a win. It also showed a marked improvement in the Wildcats ground game. Colby Owens rushed for 96 yards, while Jeremy Hubbard gained 25 yards, 14 of that on a touchdown run.

Ben Jones completed 17 of 29 passes for 214 yards.

Renner thought East Chapel Hill could have won easier than it did. The Wildcats had drives that ended on downs at East Wake’s 26, 15 and 3-yard line.

"Our defense kept us in the game the whole time while we down just 7-0. We stopped them over and over," Renner said. "At the most important time, the defense stopped them at our 2, and then we went on an 98-yard drive."

Jones capped that drive with a 14-yard pass to Owens.

"The important thing was that we did what we needed to do at the right times," Renner said.

Everyone in

Playing on the road in Lexington, Carrboro got touchdowns last Friday from four different players — five if you include quarterback Alex McVeigh — in a 28-7 win at Central Davidson.

Trai Sharpe had a 74-yard run for a Carrboro score in the first quarter. McVeigh threw touchdown passes of 31 yards to Marlin Johnson and six yards to Malik Carrington, the latter capping a 16-play, time-consuming drive that gave the Jaguars a 21-0 lead just before halftime. The Spartans got their hands on the ball for only six plays in the second quarter.

After Central Davidson cut the score to 21-7 in the third quarter, Douglas Parrish helped seal the win with a 12-run run for a final touchdown.

"We jumped out to an early lead against a very good, very physical football team," Carrboro coach Jason Tudryn said. "We had a lot of young guys who stepped up and played very well."

Sharpe ended up with 135 yards rushing, while Parrish ran for 130. McVeigh added 50 more with his scrambles.

Other games

• At Roxboro, Orange jumped on four Rocket fumbles and made them pay off in a 23-0 shutout. J.D. Brooks ran back one of the Panthers’ two pickoffs for 22 yards and a touchdown. Sean Motley completed TD passes of 25 yards to Jalen Pittman and eight yards to Matt Gattis.

• At Pittsboro, rain and lightning was about the only thing that slowed down visiting East Duplin in a 21-6 win over Northwood. The Chargers’ new flexbone option got off to a good start with Kadarus Rone’s 52-yard touchdown run in the first quarter; he ended up with 110 yards rushing. But it was all East Duplin after that, with eight different Panthers combining for 246 yards rushing in a lightning-delayed game that ended near 11 p.m.

• In Hillsborough, Cedar Ridge didn’t give first-year head coach Chris Casey a very good debut Friday. The 2A Red Wolves struggled all night, unsuccessfully, to stop 3A Eastern Alamance in a 59-6 win for the visitors.