East Clinton will look to close out the 2020 football regular season with a third straight victory with Blanchester coming to town Friday night.
The Astros are 2-3 overall and 2-2 in the division.
The Wildcats are 4-1 overall and 3-1 in the division.,
“Blanchester is well-coached and their kids play hard,” EC head coach Steven Olds said. “We are looking forward to see how we measure up.”
East Clinton’s most recent win was a 34-20 triumph over Clermont Northeastern.
“We executed much better in all three phases,” Olds said. “Outside of the punt return for TD, I thought we played a pretty clean ball game. And we will have to continue to do that in the second half of the season if we are to be successful.”
The EC offense was hitting on all cylinders last week with 144 yards passing and 183 yards rushing. Quarterback Jared Smith had his best game of the season.
“Early in the year we were not running the ball or pass blocking very well and Jared suffered like the rest of our offense because of it,” said Olds. “In the last couple of weeks, the running game has been better and our pass blocking has improved so I think Jared is benefitting from that. That’s the beautiful thing about our game, success depends on everybody doing their job together.”
Glenn Peacock has played well the past couple weeks behind the offensive line for East Clinton.
“The offensive line is improving and I think the game is finally starting to slow down for Glenn. He is starting to see the crease and make the cuts that we missed early in the year,” the EC coach said.
Despite the recent success, Olds said he doesn’t see any difference in his Astros on the practice field.
“This group has been pretty consistent, even when things were not going well early in the year.,” he said. “But I’d be lying if I said the vibe around Lees Creek wasn’t improved over the last few weeks.”
Blanchester has won the last four meetings between the two county rivals, including last season’s 38-14 victory at BHS. The ‘Cats have won five of the last seven games. East Clinton won games in 2015 (21-20) and 2013 (28-25).
