This will be the 10th meeting between the two teams in the past five years, with a playoff matchup coming in each.
The Greyhounds finally broke an eight-game Oak Hill winning streak with a 36-14 regular-season win at home, the same place Saturday’s Class D South semifinal will take place.
“The first matchup wasn’t that long ago,” Lisbon coach Dick Mynahan said. “I think that that game can be summed up as a game of two halves. I think they beat us fairly easily in the first half, and we had more luck in the second half.”
The Greyhounds outscored the Raiders 30-0 in the second half, something Oak Hill coach Stacen Doucette has made sure his team remembers entering the rematch.
“I think we’re just going to try to emotionally stay level-headed,” Doucette said. “We want to just play within ourselves and play within the scheme, and do our job. And play a full game, two halves of football.”
The No. 3 Raiders haven’t lost since then. Doucette said he was happy his team got to play last week, while No. 2 Lisbon sat out with a first-round bye.
“It’s always tough, I think, when you come off a bye week,” Mynahan said. “We were really cruising right along there, the kids were excited and uptempo in each game, and now we have to sit out a week.”
A meeting with the Raiders should get the Greyhounds’ blood flowing again. It will be Lisbon’s stout defense against Oak Hill’s potentially potent offense.
“It’s a rivalry game, and they’re well-coached. They’re a good football team,” Doucette said. “In the last few years I think that our programs have been pretty much parallel, and we’ve just come up on the lucky side a couple times. Hopefully it’s going to be a good game again this weekend, as well.”
wkramlich@sunjournal.com
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