Chapter 112: Tigers to tangle with Redmen

By JON KLEINKNECHT

inquirer Sports Editor

sports@galioninquirer.com

The mid-way point of the reg­u­lar sea­son has the Tigers tak­ing on a long-time foe in the Bucyrus Red­men this Fri­day at Unck­rich Stadium.

It will be the 112th grid­iron meet­ings between the two pro­grams. One of the five old­est rival­ries in Ohio, the series began in 1898. Galion has a record of 57–47-7 against the Red­men, includ­ing vic­to­ries in each of the past three seasons.

The Orange-and-Blue put a three-game win­ning streak on the line, includ­ing a 1–0 North Cen­tral Con­fer­ence mark. Bucyrus is 2–2 over­all and 0–1 in the con­fer­ence. The Red­men fell 47–25 to Ontario last week in their conference-opener.

The Tigers will be with­out the ser­vices of stand­out junior Dareian Watkins for at least two weeks. He had knee surgery on Mon­day to repair a torn meniscus.

That being the case, the quar­ter­back­ing duties will be han­dled by senior Austin Prosser. Prosser has played sev­eral series at the posi­tion this sea­son and has per­formed quite well.

“I have the utmost con­fi­dence in him,” said Galion head coach Chris Hawkins. “He’d be the starter for a lot of teams in the area. I’m excited for him.”

Offen­sively, Prosser has spent the major­ity of the time as a wide receiver. He leads the Tigers with 4 touch­down recep­tions. Prosser has also rushed for a touch­down and thrown a scor­ing pass.

Bucyrus comes to Tiger­town aver­ag­ing 29 points a game and allow­ing 35.5. Sopho­more quar­ter­back Cole Mur­tiff and the ver­sa­tile Micheal Pur­cell are a pro­duc­tive two-headed mon­ster for the Red­men. Mur­tiff is sec­ond in the con­fer­ence in pass­ing hav­ing com­pleted 65-of-101 passes for 797 yards and 2 touch­downs. He’s been inter­cepted 5 times. Mur­tiff also leads the Red­men in rush­ing with 353 yards on 80 car­ries and a trio of six-pointers.

Pur­cell is tops in the NCC in receiv­ing with 35 catches for 421 yards. He also has 6 rush­ing touch­downs, and is the second-leading ground-gainer for Bucyrus with 158 stripes cour­tesy of 36 attempts. He has returned a kick­off for a touchdown.

“He is their go-to player,” Hawkins said of Pur­cell. “They want to give him the ball. Defen­sively, we need to take away their big guns.”

And speak­ing of defense, the Orange-and-Blue recorded 10 sacks in a 28–0 blast­ing of Upper San­dusky five days ago. Senior nose tackle Mikey Hol­lis racked up 3 1/2, giv­ing him a conference-best 8. The Tigers yield an aver­age of 12.3 points per Fri­day, and have held two oppo­nents to 7 points or less.

Galion senior run­ning­back David Nay has bro­ken the school career rush­ing record. With 471 yards in the first 4 weeks, he has 2,866 in his career. 1986 GHS grad­u­ate and All-Ohioan Rob Mon­nett held the pre­vi­ous stan­dard of 2,758.

Kick­off Fri­day is at 7 p.m.

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Sep 18 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.