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Northwest Florida State College’s Raiders basketball team is preparing for the 2024 season under Coach Steve DeMeo, who is rebuilding the team with a fresh roster.
•Coach DeMeo brings his experience and leadership back to NWFSC, aiming to develop a championship-caliber team with new recruits.
•The Raiders have a history of success in the NJCAA and are focused on continuing their winning tradition in the upcoming season.
Niceville will have its work cut out for it when it heads to Central Florida to take on the Lakeland Dreadnaughts.
They play the team at 6 PM central time on Friday in Lakeland. From satellite maps, it looks like they’ve got a jumbotron, so you know they mean business. Niceville is 1-1 when playing on a field with a jumbotron, which seems like an important stat to add this late in the playoffs.
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If you want to watch the game, there seem to be limited options other than the six-plus hour drive to Lakeland. We will update you with how to watch the game remotely if we find a solution.
The Dreadnaughts are, after all, the number 12-ranked high school football team in the COUNTRY – and the highest-rated team in all of Florida High School Football, regardless of school size.
They are coming off a state championship last year in Head Coach Marvin Fraizer’s first campaign after taking over from Bill Castle. Fraizer is in his late thirties and looks to have a long horizon ahead of him at Lakeland. He’s 24-3 as the head coach of Lakeland and 75-10 since joining the team as an assistant in 2019.
Lakeland has a total of NINE state championships in their 100+ years on the gridiron – making them the most successful public school team in the state of Florida. The Bolles School in Jacksonville, a private school in a smaller division, has eleven.
The team is 12-0 this year, with a couple of close calls. Their first came in a 35-34 overtime victory against Lake Mary at the beginning of the season. Their second was last week’s playoff contest against Tampa Bay Tech in a 24-21 contest.
Despite the close score, Lakeland held the Techies to 98 passing yards and 169 total rush yards – a testament to their tough defense.
Furthermore, Lakeland has smashed opponents’ defenses all year with a can’t-quit offense – an average of almost 40 points per game against teams with a winning record. Most of the points they’ve allowed during the year came when the second stringers got in for playing time.
Speaking of that runaway offense, many starters on offense will play college football next year.
Offensive Tackle Ben Beyner leads the team with the shiniest offer – a spot with the Maryland Terrapins.
Senior Quarterback Zaner Smith will attend North Dakota State University to play for one of the most storied FCS teams in the country. His ten passing touchdowns and a single interception on the year have made him an almost 1000-yard passer, even though he has split significant snaps with Junior Chad Williams. Neither quarterback is a runner, so look for the lion’s share of the production on the ground to come from Jadarius Dobie, the rusher with the third-most yards in Florida 5-A football, and Jordan Henderson. Dobie has almost 600 yards rushing this year as a senior – his understudy, Henderson, has 466.
In short – the backfield has a deep bench. Niceville will have to play Lakeland with a Medusa mentality. You can’t just shut down one player on the night – you have to get em all.
Shanard Clower serves the Dreadnaughts as their top receiver when they want to hit paydirt. Smith and Williams tend to spread the ball to most of their receiving personnel, but they go to Clower when they need to get it into the end zone. Clower has less than half of the total receiving yards for the Dreadnaughts but nine of the seventeen receiving TD catches on the year. Look for the Eagles to try and shut down jersey number five as the Dreadnaughts sail into the red zone.
The defensive side of the ball features what is possibly the best secondary in all of American high school football. Lakeland has three safeties who have or will commit to division one program before the end of the recruiting period for the class of 2025. Keon Young (Ole Miss) and Sammy Etienne (West Virginia) lead the secondary with help from Jermichael Gillis (Uncommitted). Donta Jenkins (Uncommitted) provides pass rush on the quarterback to force issues in the backfield. All four players are in the Rivals Top 250 recruits from Florida for the class of 2025. Niceville’s only Top 250 from Florida is tailback Connor Mathews, who suffered a foot or ankle injury last week in the playoff game against Tallahassee Lincoln.
In the second line, Junior four-star linebacker Malik Morris holds sway over the defense. Morris has offers from Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Kentucky, Texas A and M, UCF, Georgia Tech, Minnesota, Oregon, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Washington and Miami (he’s got other offers, but let’s get on with it). He’s rated as the 18th best linebacker in the country in his class.
Niceville will have to do some superhuman lifting to beat this team – as would any team. Lakeland is a complete football team without patently obvious flaws for the Eagles to exploit. Simply put, this will be the most difficult opponent they face all year. Lakeland capitalizes on mistakes and makes opponents pay.
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