By Angie Ledbetter

To close out the regular season, the South Panola Tigers will host the Desoto Central Jaguars Friday night at 7.

The 17 Tiger seniors will be honored, including Pierre Conner, Justin Wright, Robert Wright, Montez Griffin, Josepf Pope, Nolan Parker, Michael Sanford, Domonique Carothers, Ryan Maxwell, Austin Whitworth, Darius Ivy, Deneko Ellis, E. J. Jones, Martez Wallace, Cassell Armstrong, Matthew Brown and Devin Clark.

Jaguar Coach Chris Purnell’s Jaguars are 3-6 overall and 0-5 in district. The purple and gold consist of 30 seniors, 24 juniors and 17 sophomores.

On August 8, they opened their season with a 29-23 loss to Neshoba Central. They followed with three wins over Westwood in Memphis, Lake Cormorant and Cordova. On September 25, they opened district play with Starkville and have lost every game. The Jaguars have scored 170 points and allowed 185 from their opponents.

“I want us to have a good week and come out and play well, keeping the momentum going into the playoffs. It’s a short week and it’s senior night also,” said Tiger head coach Lance Pogue.

“Everybody’s goal when you get close to the playoffs is to be playing your best and it seems like we’re doing that right now and want to keep heading in that direction. I felt like all along that we’d have a few growing pains early in the year but by November we’d be at our best. I feel like that’s the case right now. I’m really pleased where we stand right now. We just have to get ready to play each week now.”

Thursday night will be kind of bitter sweet to Pogue as he will recognize the players who were sophomores when he came in and playing high school football for the first time.

“We’re hoping it will be a lot more ball games left to play those guys and I’ve been really proud of them.”