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Last season, a long streak died in Tullahoma. For the first time since 2016, Coffee County brought the Coffee Pot home.

Now the two teams will face off on Friday, Aug. 25 for the 98th annual Coffee Pot game.

In a post-game interview from this past Friday night, Head Coach Doug Greene said, “We gotta go back to work. Gotta get a lot of mistakes fixed. A lot of these kids just played their first varsity game and usually you make your biggest gains between week one and two– and we’ll have to.”

Greene elaborated, “We played really well on defense. Our guys ran to the ball and created negative plays. Our special teams performed well also. They covered the kicks and gave us great field position a couple of times. Our offense was very inconsistent. However, we found a way to score when we got good field position. We just need to continue to grow and eliminate mistakes and continue to find this team’s identity.”

In Tullahoma’s season opener last week against Stewarts Creek the Wildcats fell 21-7 while Khani Johnson scored their only touchdown.

Last time the Raiders faced the Wildcats, Tullahoma never led in the game. At halftime, the score was 14-14, but 2023 graduate Konor Heaton caught a pass to up the score. At the end of the game, Coffee won 35-14.

Cole Pippenger was named MVP of the game by the Great American Rivalry Series.

“I feel like we’re going to keep the same momentum we had last year,” Pippenger said in pre-season.

“We’re in a new district, we can handle it. We’re going to have a good year. Every game we have this year is going to be tough. It’s going to be a dog fight,” he said.

For this Coffee Pot, Coffee County will host Tullahoma for the annual matchup Friday, Aug. 25 at 7 p.m.

The Raiders enter the field having scored a win over Franklin Co. 10-7 in Winchester in their opening game of the season.