MORGANTOWN — Morgantown High’s offensive struggles couldn’t come at a worse time.
The Mohigans have scored just one offensive touchdown in the past five quarters and will need to right the ship as soon as possible because they’ll face one of the best offenses in the state Friday against Wheeling Park.
“This week, we had to kind of condense the playbook and get back to the basics,” Morgantown coach Matt Lacy said. “I think we may have gotten too much in the playbook at one time before we mastered the basics.”
Wheeling Park’s offense features a lot of big linemen and an aggressive run game. So the emphasis this week in practice for the Mohigans has been physicality.
Wheeling Park scored 51 points in a loss to Parkersburg last week and is averaging more than 50 points per game over the first five games of the season. This is all without all-state quarterback Cross Wilkinson, who is now playing college ball at Toledo.
“We want to be smash mouth football,” Lacy said. “Running the football is our strength. We gotta get back to moving people off the ball, which we stressed in film [Monday]. We need movement whether it’s vertical or horizontal. We just need movement somewhere along the line.
“We have to find a way to slow them (Wheeling Park) down. Probably the old cliché, ‘Your best defense is keeping the ball away from them.’ ”
What’s really hurt the Mohigans is the loss of leading receiver Preston Fox, who could miss the rest of the regular season after breaking his collarbone Sept. 21 against Linsly.
Of Morgantown’s 432 receiving yards this season, Fox has 272 with two touchdowns.
Despite the offensive struggles, running back Ty Konchesky has performed well. He had 116 yards and a touchdown against Musselman High last week. He leads the team in rushing with 483 yards and six scores.
One of the key contributors is starting quarterback Cam Rice, who got banged up in last week’s loss, but he said he’s good to go.
“I just got the wind knocked out of me,” Rice said. “I was all right.”
Rice agreed with his head coach’s stance on getting back to basics. He said perfecting the little things and getting the run game going could be what opens up big-play opportunities which, ultimately, could get the offense back on track.
Morgantown fell to 3-3 with the loss to Musselman, but Lacy isn’t panicking.
“If you look at our record, realistically, we’re five or six plays away from being 6-0,” Lacy said. “We’ve lost all three of those games by 19 points, so less than a touchdown in those three losses. It’s more about taking care of ourselves before worrying about what they (opponents) do.”
Kickoff for Friday’s game is at 7 p.m. at Wheeling Island Stadium.
