Thurston and Wilsonville are an even 3-3 against one another since November of 2016, but not for long. The Thurston Colts will head out on the road to face off against the Wilsonville Wildcats at 7:00 p.m. on Friday. Both teams are coming into the contest red-hot, with Thurston sitting on eight straight victories and Wilsonville on seven.
It can be hard to translate regular season success to the playoffs, but Thurston had no problem doing just that on Friday. They walked away with a 37-24 win over Dallas.
Thurston can attribute much of their success to Walker Bonar, who picked up 179 receiving yards and two touchdowns, and Noah Blair, who threw for 326 yards and four touchdowns while completing 74.3% of his passes. Bonar's longest reception was for an incredible 95 yards.
Meanwhile, Wilsonville stacked a eighth blowout onto their ever-increasing hoard on Friday. They simply couldn't be stopped as they easily beat Crater 42-7 at home. Given Wilsonville's advantage in MaxPreps' Oregon football rankings (they are ranked sixth, while Crater is ranked 83rd), the result wasn't entirely unexpected.
Mark Wiepert and Kallen Gutridge were among the main playmakers for Wilsonville as the former picked up 215 receiving yards and four touchdowns and the latter threw for 353 yards and six touchdowns while picking up 14.1 yards per attempt. Gutridge has been hot recently, having posted three or more passing touchdowns the last six times he's played. Maverick Summers also helped out with an impressive 88 receiving yards.
Thurston's victory was their fourth straight at home, which pushed their record up to 8-2. Those victories were due in large part to their offensive dominance across that stretch, as they averaged 43.5 points per game. As for Wilsonville, their win bumped their record up to 9-1.
Thurston was taken down by Wilsonville 44-15 in their previous meeting back in September. Can Thurston avenge their loss or is history doomed to repeat itself? We'll find out soon enough.
