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West Liberty-Salem (7-1 overall, 2-1 Ohio Heritage Conference North Division) hosts undefeated West Jefferson (8-0, 3-0 OHC) in what amounts to the OHC title game. West Jefferson is The Broncos are officially 8-0, but a season-opening win against the Columbus Crusaders club team doesn’t count in the OHSAA computer points.
West Liberty-Salem enters ranked No. 8 in D-VI, Region 24. West Jefferson is No. 8 in D-V, Region 20.
A big reason for West Liberty-Salem’s success is its offensive and defensive lines. Seniors Trevor Burton, Tevon McNutt and Raajih Rollen have spearheaded a group that also includes juniors Dominic Blair and Thad Lawrence and sophomores Kyle Wolf and Isaac Lee.
“Those seniors did a nice job of leading that group,” McGill said. “What I like about them is they are competitive in practices and they really do a good job of pushing each other. That’s really how you get better, in practice. … We’ve had a few injuries but we’ve had other guys step in. We haven’t really seen a drop off in production so that’s encouraging.”
West Jefferson is outscoring opponents 48-12 in its seven OHSAA games.
“Yes it’s a big game and the guys are well aware of what’s at stake, but at the end of the day it’s the 11 guys on the field we have against the 11 guys they have,” McGill said. “Which group of guys is going to execute better?”
• Two weeks remain for teams to make their final playoff pushes. The Greeneview Rams have done all they can to qualify for the D-V, Region 20 postseason with an 8-0 record. The Rams, though, are No. 9 in the computer points. The top eight teams in each region advance.
Greeneview’s final two regular-season games are against Catholic Central (3-5) on Friday and Madison-Plains (4-4) next week.
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