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Best Bets: Week 6

Highlands WR Matteo Matteoli (photo by: Greg Shoemaker/TriStateFootball.com)

We are officially halfway through the 2023 high school football season! Playoff pictures should be beginning to take shape over the next few weeks as we head into “playoff projections” season.

Some teams that we were concerned about earlier in the season appear to be improving and we know which teams are struggling to score points. Therefore, we are starting to know which teams may make it in the playoffs and which teams will be left out. The seeding, however, is now what teams are playing for.Which teams have prime opportunities to improve their seeding? Here are this week’s Best Bets.

#20 HIGHLANDS AT #24 COOPER
Highlands is picking up their pace after a bit of a slow start to the season. The Bluebirds nearly got by a tough Lexington Catholic team on the road before losing to their rival, Covington Catholic, in Week 2. Since then, Highlands is 3-0 and has outscored its opponents 159-55, including a 40-0 shutout in Week 5 against another tough opponent in Raceland on the road.

Impressively, Highlands is getting great production out of two quarterbacks. Brody Benke and Rio Litmer have both had 100 or more passing yards in three out of five games so far this season. In Week 3 against Campbell County, Benke threw for 263 yards and Litmer threw for 249 yards, with each tossing four touchdown passes. An incredible dynamic duo under center is always a tough matchup for any opposing coach. 

Complementing the pass game is an effective run game, which consists of five games of rushing for at least 100 yards as a team, and two games of rushing for over 200 yards. On the season, the dynamic offense has scored 214 points, which is good enough for third in all of Class 5A in Kentucky. 

Despite shutting out Raceland, the Highlands defense can be a little shoddy at times, giving big yards and points to both Covington Catholic and Campbell County. However, the Cooper defense has been stellar this season, only giving up 58 points, which is the fifth best mark in all of Class 5A.

Cooper’s offense is not quite as dynamic as Highlands’, but should still be formidable and give the Bluebirds some pause. Just like Highlands, Cooper is coming off a 40-0 shutout of its own, beating Great Crossing on the road. Quarterback Cam O’Hara threw for 272 yards and six touchdown passes in the win. Isaiah Johnson was on the receiving end of 130 yards and three touchdowns. The Jaguars’ offense is quite a bit of a step up from Raceland, which could give Highlands some fits.

Austin Alexander is arguably the best player in the state of Kentucky in the Class of 2025. The Jaguar is a punishing playmaker on both sides of the ball. He was named the 2022 TriStateFootball Kentucky Defensive Player of the Year.

The matchup to watch is Highlands’ offense v.s. Cooper defense. Can the Jaguars defense slow down the dynamic duo of Benke and Litmer? Or will the duo have a field day with the Cooper defense?

When the two played in 2022, the Bluebirds cruised to an easy 34-5 win. Expect a tighter contest in 2023, but the edge still goes to Highlands here.

#25 WYOMING AT READING
The annual matchup between two of the top teams in the Cincinnati Hills League may be the most evenly-matched meeting in a long time. Wyoming graduated its leading rusher from a year ago in C.J. Hester, while the Reading Blue Devils’ run game has been outstanding through five weeks of the regular season. The Cowboys are hoping to extend their winning streak over Reading to eight in a row, last losing to the Blue Devils in 2015.

After five weeks in the season, Wyoming finds itself in a familiar place in the standings, at the top. While the offense is just a tick down from points scored at this point in the season compared to last season, the Cowboys offense is still formidable. 

The unit has been able to produce a balanced attack of passing and rushing. In the Cowboys’ Week 4 shutout win over Taylor, the Cowboys as a team rushed for 305 yards, led by Jackson Hamilton’s 134 yards and a touchdown. Two weeks before that in a win over Aiken, the passing attack outgained the rushing attack 212 to 116. Quarterback Quaid Hauer has a quarterback rating of 165, which is second among quarterbacks in the Cincinnati Hills League.

Reading is led by a strong rushing unit, particularly CHL-leading rusher Austin Fancher. Fancher has rushed for 724 yards and 13 touchdowns through five games. However, more than half of those stats came from one game, a 366-yard, eight-touchdown game against Summit Country Day. Still, Reading boasts two Top 5 rushers in the CHL. The fourth-leading rusher in the league is Landen Schaefer, who is coming off a game where he rushed for 191 yards and two touchdowns against Madeira. 

As if the offensive breakdown weren’t enough, this matchup also features the two best defenses in the CHL. The Cowboys defense has only given up 38 points while Reading has given up 74 points. For offensive points, Reading is outscoring the Cowboys 209 to 139.

This game could finally flip. Wyoming has been on top for a long time, but this feels like an upset alert/trap game for the Cowboys. Reading is always a tough place to play for opposing teams as well. Expect Reading to compete hard and possibly pull off the upset.

#12 TAFT AT #8 WITHROW
This has been an excellent year for the Cincinnati Metro Athletic Conference’s top teams. Taft and Withrow both loaded their non-conference schedules with excellent teams with some near upsets happening for both squads. Withrow narrowly lost to Division I powerhouse St. Xavier while Taft was battle tested against a difficult DuPont Manual squad in Kentucky. Having been battle tested up to this point, these two schools will square off for possible “best team in Cincinnati Public Schools” bragging rights.

Withrow rebounded well after the loss to St. Xavier by knocking off Trotwood-Madison 21-7. Luke Dunn had another spectacular game by 187 yards and three touchdowns. His TD to Interception ratio is 12:3 and his passer rating is an excellent 168.1. Dunn is leading an excellent offensive squad which is also currently featuring one of the top receiving corps in the area with Chris Henry Jr. and Dantrell Moses. 

Taft also boasts a high-powered quarterback in Armoud Seals, who has thrown for 1,090 yards and 12 touchdowns. He has four more interceptions on the season than Dunn, but still has a higher passer rating of 181.5. Seals is coming off one of his worst performances of the season, where he only threw for 156 yards, one touchdown, and two interceptions. Rebounding could prove difficult against a Taft team that is only giving up an average of 6.6 points per game.

Both teams are battle tested, however Withrow has played one of the best high school football programs in the country in St. Xavier and took the Bombers down to the wire. Withrow also boasts a better defense (on paper, at least.) The Tigers have the edge.

FENWICK AT #14 BADIN
Is there anything better than a rematch between two teams that scored a combined 20 points in a 14-6 affair the year before? Probably but this rematch has the makings of one of the top games in non-Divisions I and II. Fenwick and Badin are both coming into this matchup with winning records (including a perfect 5-0 record for the Rams) and both have been tested against formidable foes.

Badin’s biggest win of the season perhaps came in Week 1 by beating the much larger Hamilton Big Blue for City of Hamilton bragging rights. In the Rams’ last three games, they’ve outscored opponents 126-28 behind the leadership and arm of quarterback Alex Ritzie.

Fenwick, meanwhile, is looking to rebound after their first loss of the season handed to them by a rising Mount Healthy team. The Falcons’ defense has produced two shutouts in the first five weeks.

This game was incredibly close last year. Based on the defensive outputs for both teams, we may see a similar result this year. 

GAME OF THE WEEK
Make sure to check out the COMPLETE PREVIEW for this week’s featured game on the Blitz 5 Tour, No. 1 Winton Woods at No. 11 Anderson.

Here are some other games for teams ranked inside the Blitz 5 Top 25:

OHIO
No. 2 Princeton at Oak Hills

No. 4 Elder at No. 6 St. Xavier

No. 13 La Salle at No. 5 Moeller

No. 7 Lakota West at No. 16 Sycamore

Little Miami at No. 9 Milford

Fairfield at No. 15 Hamilton

No. 17 Middletown at No. 21 Mason

West Clermont at No. 18 Kings

No. 22 Clinton-Massie at Wilmington

No. 23 Mount Healthy at Northwest

KENTUCKY
Holmes at No. 10 Covington Catholic

Gallatin County at No. 19 Beechwood

INDIANA
South Dearborn at No. 3 East Central

 

 

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