YORKVILLE — Buckeye Local may have lost its fifth game last week, but the Panthers’ offensive showed signs of real life for the first time against a team not named Brownsville.
In the 44-33 shootout loss at Shenandoah, Alex McDiffitt emerged as a viable threat for head coach Jim Hoover’s Panthers.
He threw for 166 yards and three touchdowns while also rushing for 130 yards and two additional scores.
Loss or not, given the Panthers previous struggles putting points on the board, that effort had to be viewed as a positive.
Buckeye’s going to need a similar effort, if not more so, plus an equally solid outing from its defense if it hopes to secure win No. 2 this week.
Coming to World War II Memorial Stadium are the red-hot Red Knights of Toronto, led by junior quarterback Russ Dickinson who’s out to prove to everyone that there’s more than one talented QB in the Toronto locker room.
Dickinson took over for the injured Zeb Kinsey during the Weir game and nearly piloted his team to victory. The next three weeks, Dickinson balled out against Madonna, Oak Glen, and most recently, Edison, orchestrating a late drive to hand the Wildcats their first loss of the season.
With the score knotted at 20-20, Dickinson hooked up on two length pass plays, covering a combined 73 yards, for the go-ahead touchdown.
“Russ has that mentality that he’s going to give you everything he has until that clock reads zeros,” Toronto coach Josh Franke said. “He’s a competitor and a winner. Everyone may have wrote us off (after the injury), but he’s proving to everybody he’s good enough to be a starting quarterback.”
In three games as a starter, Dickinson has 877 yards passed and five TDs. He also leads the team in sacks and is a disruptor from his inside backer position, a big reason why, despite Toronto being an injury away from playing its third-string quarterback, Franke keeps Dickinson in for defense.
He’s dialed down the designed QB runs considerably, much easier to do with a backfield speedster like Dominic Bouscher that Dickinson can turn and hand off too.
Bouscher has run for 394 yards and six touchdowns, adding 423 and two as a receiver. He’s Dickinson’s top target.
All of Toronto’s goals are still obtainable, though it comes as no surprise to the coaching staff. They knew what they had waiting in Dickinson.
The Red Knights are currently No. 5 in Division VII, Region 25’s OHSAA rankings. While Buckeye has just the lone win, the base points for defeating a Division IV team would be a nice little boost to Toronto’s position in its region.
Of the four teams above, only Western Reserve, which faces 4-2 Springfield, is opposite a team with a winning record this week.
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