Oak Park-River Forest football team faces two must win games

By TIM STABLEIN-There’s very little chance of the Oak Park-River Forest football team reaching the Class 8A playoffs for a third-straight year with a 5-4 record. The Huskies simply won’t have enough points (total number of wins by all nine opponents) if they don’t beat West Suburban Conference (WSC) Silver Division rivals Downers Grove North on Saturday at home and York on the road six days later. OPRF heads into the final two weeks of the regular season with 28 points. The playoff cut for 5-4 teams last year was 35 OPRF didn’t help itself by dropping Larkin in the season opener this year and picking up Elk Grove. Larkin is currently 3-4 while Elk Grove has one win and isn’t likely to get a second or third.. Another move which isn’t helping was agreeing several years ago to make Morton the permanent crossover opponent in the WSC instead of continuing to play Proviso East. Morton will have another season with zero wins, while Proviso East could finish with six. The other team the Huskies need to win is Willowbrook, which plays York and Morton in the last two weeks. The Huskies will pick up a handful of points from guaranteed wins of teams in the WSC Silver Division the next two weeks, but that won’t be enough. Coaches need to think of points as much as wins when the nonconference schedule is put together if the state playoffs are the goal. That’s especially true for teams that won’t be winning seven, eight or nine games every season like a Mount Carmel, St. Rita, Wheaton-Warrenville South, Joliet Catholic to name a few .The followers of the orange and blue need to be big fans of Elk Grove, Willowbrook and Morton the next two weeks.