Wittenberg football coach Joe Fincham might want to dial up one of his predecessors, former coach Ron Murphy, this week to get a scouting report on Heidelberg.

Murphy, still a familiar face at games, might not be able to give an updated scouting report on Heidelberg. But he at least would know the way to Tiffin because he was the last Wittenberg head coach to face the Student Princes on an annual basis (1984-88).

The 12th-ranked Tigers found out Sunday they will face 11th-ranked Heidelberg, their former Ohio Athletic Conference rivals, in the first round of the NCAA Division III playoffs at noon Saturday in Tiffin. That’s a two-hour drive north of Springfield.

The winner will play No. 7 Hobart (10-0) or Washington & Lee (8-2) in the second round.

“It is absolutely a great opportunity,” Fincham said. “Our players and our staff will be very excited to play in the tournament. Hopefully, we go up there and play well.”

The Tigers (9-1) secured the North Coast Athletic Conference’s automatic playoff berth by beating Oberlin 47-20 on Saturday to clinch a share of the conference title. They won the tiebreaker over Ohio Wesleyan, which didn’t make the field.

Heidelberg earned one of seven at-large berths in the field. The Student Princes finished 9-1, losing only to perennial OAC champion Mount Union (33-14).

Only one of their nine victories was decided by less than 14 points, and that was Saturday’s regular-season finale against Baldwin-Wallace. Heidelberg won 35-34 on a 1-yard touchdown run by Michael Mees with 9:20 left in the fourth quarter.

“They’ve got a very good football team,” Fincham said. “That shows in the scores. I don’t think they played very well this past week from everything I heard against a good Baldwin-Wallace team, but they may be the only team this year that made Mount work a little bit.”

Wittenberg is 42-18 all-time against Heidelberg, but has played only twice (2000 and 2001, both won by Tigers) since Wittenberg left the OAC after the 1988 season.

Wittenberg will make its ninth playoff appearance in Fincham’s 17 seasons.

Leading the Tigers are: junior quarterback Reed Florence, who has passed for 23 touchdowns and ran for seven; junior receiver Brendon Cunningham (787 yards); freshman running back Jimmy Dehnke, who is 1 yard short of tying Casey Donaldson’s 1997 record for rushing yards by a freshman (769); linebacker Spencer Leno (97 tackles); and defensive lineman Jonathan Daniels (56 tackles).

“We had a stretch in the season where I wasn’t excited about the way we were playing,” Fincham said. “We certainly picked it up. I don’t know that we’ve had great consistency in our play in the last couple of weeks, but I think we have a little bit of a groove to us.”