For about forty-six minutes Friday night, this did not feel like a win for the Yellow Jackets.
Then 1.7 seconds, 24 yards, and one foot changed everyone's Friday night. Hanna is 1-0, and here's the beautiful thing about the record book - it does not care. It does not know if the offense sputtered, that the first-half runs kept coming up a yard or two short, that some of the folks in the visiting stands had already started doing the math on a loss. A one-point win and a forty-point win go in the same column.
We hear a lot about a game of halves, whether what happens early carries over or evaporates. Friday was a game of three quarters and how the whole thing tilted in the fourth. Of Hanna's 208 rushing yards, 101 came in that final quarter. That is not an accident, and it is not luck. That is how this team plays.
Hanna makes you decide whether you are willing to go into deep physical water. Then they make you go there whether you want to or not. Play after play, the Jackets stack punishment, inch by inch, dragging BHP, or whoever the opponent is, somewhere they do not want to be. You could feel it building even when the scoreboard refused to reward it. And nothing spoke that louder than the last drive.
With just over two minutes left, Hanna marches 33 yards on six plays. And the two snaps right before the kick? Brock Cole rumbled up the middle for 10 and then 12, the second one moving the chains. Those were not some specialty called runs. Those were the interest payments on 46 minutes of pounding.
Was the offense clean? No. From the cheap seats it left plenty to be desired, and I'd bet the coaching staff would tell you the same in a quieter room. But there is a trait no stat sheet we keep can measure, unless you count the only stat that ever really matters, which is the outcome. It is the ability to refuse the ending everyone else has already written for you. To strain and push and somehow arrive at the exact right spot with a chance to win. Ask a coach whether they'd trade that quality for a prettier stat line and watch how fast they say no. It is always better to be the team that squeezed one out than the team on the bus home wishing for one more possession.
The defense was the actual headliner
We just spent a few hundred words on the offense, and the offense put the points on the board and won the game. But the defense won the night.
The aggregate looks ordinary. Dig in and it stops looking ordinary in a hurry. Hanna gave up 251 total yards, 220 through the air and 31 on the ground. Now watch what happens to that passing number. Four of those catches went to Malachi Bohler for 162 yards. That is 73.7 percent of BHP's entire passing output going to one guy. Two of them were touchdowns, 55 yards and 78 yards, 133 yards on two snaps.
I don't dare to pretend to know assignments, but a reasonable guess says those touchdowns came off of busted coverage or a mistake rather than anything the offense schemed up. Every play counts and every point is real, I'm not waving them away. But strip out those two-to-four plays and you are staring at a suffocating stat line.
Let’s start with the run defense. Thirty-one rushing yards. On 25 carries. Against BHP. This is a program that has averaged 250 rushing yards a game over the last three seasons, and Hanna held them to 31. That is not a good night against the run. That is a special one, the kind of number that should make every Jacket fan exhale a little heading into 2026.
The engine in the middle was Zy West, and he was a showstopper. Ten total tackles, two for loss, a sack, a forced fumble, four quarterback hurries. The interior line spot is usually the job nobody claps for, the one asked to eat blockers and take up space so someone behind him gets the glory. West took up space and got the glory. Around him, Connor Ash (8 tackles, 2 TFLs), Darius Hanna (9 tackles), and Carson Cole (7 tackles, 1 TFL) kept the middle closed for business.
The kicker with the train horn in his ear
I cannot close this out without mentioning Corban Lack, who spent his Friday night proving that a kicker can stamp a game just as hard as a returner or receiver.
Ice water in his veins, sure. But there's real power in that leg too. He drilled the game-winner while the home crowd screamed and somebody leaned on a train horn. He also kept flipping the field all night while the offense searched for a foothold. His final line: 41.6-yard punt average with three inside the 20, plus three kickoffs averaging 55 yards and a touchback on a 65-yard boot. Last week's preview was all about Hanna's return game. Turns out the guy kicking it away had the loudest night on special teams.
Up next: a trip to Powdersville
One in the bank, and now the road bends toward the Patriots.
Hanna stays inside Anderson County but heads to Powdersville, and the task doesn’t get any easier in Week 2. Powdersville is coming off an Upper State championship appearance during an 11-3 season that ended with a 35-7 loss to BHP in that title game. They opened 2026 with a 28-12 win over Seneca.
Powdersville's reputation is built on the lines of scrimmage and on skill players who make you miss. This year fits the description.
The offense runs through two dynamic players. Xavier Huggins made the 3A All-State team last season with 16 touchdowns and 1,552 all-purpose yards. Nasir Waldrop was right there with him, 16 total touchdowns, 1,072 rushing yards, 279 receiving. That is explosive balance, two players who can each carry the load.
But the guy who might cause the most sleepless nights is Riggs Savage, a 6-foot-6, 235-pound junior tight end. Savage holds a stack of Division I offers and is ranked the No. 1 tight end and No. 4 overall player in South Carolina in his class by 247Sports. If Nick Sargent was last week's dual-threat tight end problem, Savage is that problem with a longer résumé. He can block a defensive end, wall off a linebacker, and set the edge on outside runs. He is also a genuine route runner, whether he's lined up with his hand in the dirt or split wide to bully a smaller defender.
Here is the part that could worry you. Powdersville likes to use Savage as a lead blocker on quick receiver screens to Huggins. Think about that. A 6-foot-6, 235-pound athlete clearing the path, and one of the state's best playmakers running behind him. Pair that with a strong screen game out of the backfield and you're being asked to defend the entire field on every snap.
Running the show is Dashton Brown, a quarterback making just his second varsity start, as Keigan Reid, a 4 year starter graduated last year. Don't be shocked to see Waldrop or Huggins take a wildcat snap either.
Defensively, Powdersville lives in the front seven, and the linebackers are the calling card, led by Jayden Wertz, 2025 region defensive player of the year.. The style is pressure and havoc, though it isn't just teeing off and blitzing every down. They're multiple, sliding from even fronts to odd, stunting and twisting across the line, filling run gaps, keeping an offense guessing about where the next problem comes from. That active front is built to disrupt a run game, which means it's built to disrupt exactly what Hanna wants to do. Pressure like this creates turnovers, and turnovers have been a Patriots trademark under Coach Mustar. Hanna will need to trust assignments and take care of the ball this Friday.
Three things that keep the Jackets unbeaten
Win on the back end. It starts up front. Whoever takes the first snap for Powdersville is making his second varsity start, and Hanna has to make an inexperienced passer uncomfortable. If the rush arrives, the defensive backs can trust it and lock onto those playmakers running routes.
Start faster. It took nearly three and a half quarters for the offense to find a gear Friday. A quick start flips this from a grind into a big night.
Cut the mistakes. Ten penalties for 80 yards last week is a number that shrinks as young players get reps. Fewer flags, fewer missed assignments, fewer lapses in the split-second decisions football demands. The team that lined up against BHP is already not the team lining up this week. That's how this works, practice to practice, Friday to Friday, youth becomes experience.
Statistically Speaking
Each week this space digs into a stat that's a little more obscure, or one that means something specific to this particular game. This week: first impressions.
Hanna has never played Powdersville, a program that didn't exist until 2012. That got me wondering how Hanna has historically handled a new opponent.
Turns out, pretty well. Hanna is 35-9-1 (78.9 percent) in first recorded regular-season meetings, and 17-5-1 (76.1 percent) when that first meeting is on the road. Recent history sharpens the point. Since 2000, Hanna is 8-1 against brand-new regular-season opponents, the lone blemish a 2000 loss to Lexington. Across those nine games the Jackets have averaged 32.9 points scored and 13.3 allowed, hanging 40-plus in six of the nine.
It will be exciting to see how this week’s first impression is made at Powdersville.
Most weeks we stop at one rabbit hole. This week, one more, because it's too good to sit on. Under Coach Tone, Hanna is 40-0 when it allows 20 or fewer points, and 49-1 when it allows 24 or fewer. Read that again. Keep the other team under 24, and across this era Hanna has lost exactly one time.
Which loops all the way back to a defense that looks to be leading the way.
Closing
Being 1-0 heading into Week 2 is better than the alternative. That part's obvious. The better part, the part that should have you circling Friday, is walking in knowing Hanna’s best football is still ahead of them.
Hanna did not play to its ceiling against BHP. What it did was find a win the way this program has always found them, in the deep water, one punishing yard at a time, with an ice-cold kicker waiting at the end. Now the road heads to Powdersville, where a good, dangerous, well-coached team is waiting with All-State players and a tight end half the country wants. It's a real test, the kind that tells you something true about a team still figuring out who it is.
The team that starts Friday won't be the one that started against BHP. That's the fun of early season matchups; games full of question marks. We get to watch the answers show up in real time, starting in Powdersville.