Throughout the spring and summer, we’ll be delivering football preview content to HSOT Insiders. Today is a look at the teams that lost the most one-score games in the 2023 season.

All football fans know that there is a large amount of variance over year-to-year. At the NFL level, researchers have found that teams who win a high number of close games tend to revert to the mean during the following season. The reverse tends to be true as well.

I’ve decided to track this for North Carolina high school football. I’ve gone through each team’s 2023 results to identify the one-possession finishes (score differences of eight or less points). Next year, we’ll see how these teams performed in close contests in 2024 to see if there is a difference.

Frankly, I don’t know if we’ll see similarities to how close game results change for NFL teams year-to-year. Since this hasn’t been done with high school before, you can look at the teams below from a half glass full perspective or a half glass empty perspective. Maybe some of these teams were consistently unlucky in close games last year and that luck will turn around this fall. Maybe these losses were simply a result of a skill deficit or a bad decision. There’s no telling on the surface.

An important caveat: the final score alone is not always going to be indicative of how “close” a game was. In a lot of cases, losing teams score towards the end of the game against backups to make the final score appear closer than it was. Of course, it is still the responsibility of the team ahead to stop the losing team from scoring, so some might not think the garbage time scoring factor should matter. I have not watched every game, so it would not even be possible to factor in the garbage time scoring if I wanted to.

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4A Teams That Lost the Most One-Score Games in 2023

• Green Hope (Cary) 0-4
• Green Level (Cary) 0-4
• Northern Guilford (Greensboro) 0-4
• Sanderson (Raleigh) 0-4
• Cary 1-4
• West Cabarrus (Concord) 1-4
• Jack Britt (Fayetteville) 2-4
• A.L. Brown (Kannapolis) 0-3
• Mallard Creek (Charlotte) 0-3
• Davie County (Mocksville) 1-3
• Knightdale 1-3
• Myers Park (Charlotte) 1-3
• Clayton 2-3
• Ragsdale (Jamestown) 2-3
• Southeast Raleigh 2-3
• Alexander Central (Taylorsville) 3-3
• Parkland (Winston-Salem) 3-3

3A Teams That Lost the Most One-Score Games in 2023

• Freedom (Morganton) 1-4
• South Brunswick (Southport) 1-4
• Harnett Central (Angier) 2-4
• Lee County (Sanford) 0-3
• Person (Roxboro) 0-3
• South Johnston (Four Oaks) 0-3
• Southern Durham 0-3
• Forestview (Gastonia) 1-3
• South Point (Belmont) 1-3
• Tuscola (Waynesville) 1-3
• Westover (Fayetteville) 1-3

2A Teams That Lost the Most One-Score Games in 2023

• Eastern Wayne (New Hope) 0-3
• Holmes (Edenton) 0-3
• North Wilkes (Hays) 0-3
• Southwest Onslow (Jacksonville) 0-3
• Cummings (Burlington) 1-3
• Greene Central (Snow Hill) 1-3
• Surry Central (Dobson) 1-3
• T.W. Andrews (High Point) 1-3
• Wheatmore (Trinity) 1-3
• Lincolnton 2-3
• St. Pauls 2-3
• West Lincoln (Lincolnton) 3-3

1A Teams That Lost the Most One-Score Games in 2023

• Rosewood 0-4
• Andrews 0-3
• Elkin 0-3
• Alleghany (Sparta) 1-3
• Hayesville 1-3
• Albemarle 2-3
• Corvian Community (Charlotte) 2-3

Source: highschoolot.com