Wilmington looks to keep its perfect road record intact Friday night when the Hurricane makes the long trek to New Richmond.
Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. Friday night.
Wilmington has won four games on the road this season at Miami Trace, Ross, Aiken and Batavia. WHS was 1-5 away from Alumni Field last season and 8-11 the previous four season.
New Richmond lost last week to Batavia, a team they’d beaten 28 of the last 32 meetings. The last Batavia win in the series was 1999.
“Batavia took care of business and that’s what we need to do,” WHS head coach Ryan Evans Sr. said. “It was all gas no brakes for them and that’s the mentality that we need to come out with.”
New Richmond is a young team that can be a problem for Wilmington is they are allowed to hang around.
“They are young but they will be prepared,” Evans said. “They have a good coaching staff that will have them ready to bounce back. We better play like we want to or we will feel like New Richmond did last week. Start faster, end faster.”
Wilmington had several players hobbled following the Goshen game last week. Evans said they all will be game-time decisions Friday night.
Caydn Denniston has 727 yards rushing and has a shot at 1,000 yards for the season.
Malachi Cumberland’s monster defensive season continues as he has 26 tackles for loss among his 70 total stops and eight sacks.
He has help, to be sure, with Jesse Keith (11 tackles for loss), Bryson Schutte (12 tackles for loss), Jelani Hunter (14 tackles for loss) and Donavon Perdue (11.5 tackles for loss) around the ball as well.
RECORDS: Wilmington is 6-2 overall and 2-1 in the SBAAC American Division. The Hurricane has won two in a row and four of its last five. New Richmond is 5-3 overall, 1-2 in conference play. The Lions are on a two-game losing streak, dropping a pair of SBAAC shootouts to Western Brown 55-40 and Batavia 52-34.
SERIES: New Richmond has won five of the six meetings between the two schools. Wilmington’s only win in the series was a 34-13 victory last season. The Lions won the previous games 32-22, 35-14, 27-13, 56-30 and 41-21.
PLAYOFFS: Both teams are in Div. III Region 12 and control their own destiny, meaning win two games and they are in. The Hurricane is ninth overall while the Lions are 11th. The winner this week should move into a spot where hosting a first-round playoff game is possible.
There are 708 schools in this week’s 11-player football computer ratings. The 72 largest schools are in Division I, while the remaining schools are divided equally in Divisions II through VII (approximately 106 schools in each division). The top 20 schools in each region are listed below by division and region with record and average points. The football page at OHSAA.org includes an explanation of how the ratings are calculated. The top 16 teams in each region in the final report will qualify for the playoffs.
FINALE: Wilmington will finish the regular season Oct. 20 at Alumni Field against Western Brown.
Reach Mark Huber at 937-556-5765, via email [email protected] or at twitter.com @wnjsports
