Clinton-Massie travels to Gardner Park Friday night to face the Washington Senior, a battle of South Central Ohio League unbeaten teams.
Kickoff is scheduled for 7:30 p.m.
Clinton-Massie has outscored Washington 216-0 the past three seasons. The last time the Blue Lions scored against the Falcons was in a 69-7 loss in 2011.
However, Washington is the last SCOL team to defeat Clinton-Massie and it came in Fayette Co. on Oct. 12, 2007. Since then, Massie has blitzed the league to the tune of 47 straight wins.
Clinton-Massie is averaging more than 50 points a game this season, with the most evenly-balanced offense in the McSurley era. With Hunter Fentress as good a passing quarterback as this county has seen in recent memory, the Falcons can beat you through the air as well as on the ground.
“I think the offense is functioning with efficiency,” McSurley said.
While the 80 points given up by Massie is more than some season totals, the defense is improving.
“We believe the players are in the correct position defensively,” said McSurley. “We think our entire defense has gotten better since Steubenville and that game was a tremendous measuring stick for games down the road. It really gave us the ability to correct our deficiencies on the defensive side of the ball.”
Clinton-Massie was defeated by Steubenville in Week 2, 37-18.
Since then, the Falcons have steamrolled a trio of opponents by a combined score of 185-35.
Unfortunately, that means the front-line players for Massie have been exiting games prior to the final whistle.
“The concern would be that our varsity has only played in six (complete) quarters since Steubenville,” McSurley said.
The coach has been through this many years now, so he’s used to designing a schedule that allows the Falcons to improve even with diminishing game time.
“We need to control what we can control and that’s practice through the week,” he said.
