For some teams who got big Week 8 wins: Who’s next?

The football teams at Liberty, Chester County, Milan and McKenzie all got big wins last week that either helped them in their pursuit of district championships or were crucial to their hopes of making the playoffs.

While all of those wins were good for the team, the coaches don’t want to spend too much time celebrating because each of them have quality non-district competition coming up this week.

McKenzie is the only one of the four who gets to play at home, but the Rebels are hosting Westview, a team that put 62 points on the scoreboard last year when they met in Martin.

“Westview is a good team all the way around,” said McKenzie head coach Wade Comer. “Their defense won’t allow you to gain big chunks of yards, so any points you score you earn with a long drive that takes a while to get down the field because you play offense with a lot of discipline.

“Their line is big up front and able to push just about any line they go up against around, so you’ve got to deal with that plus good players they have in the backfield.”

But Comer is glad to have a team like Westview on the schedule just before the regular season ends.

“[Westview head coach Don Coady] and I have always gotten along pretty well, and I think both of our programs have a lot of respect for each other,” Comer said. “I don’t know if you’d call our games a rivalry, but it’s definitely been a good series for us in which they make us better, and I hope we make them better.”

Liberty goes on the road to take on Millington, a power in Class 6A ball in Memphis who’s had a good season.

“Their season has mirrored ours a lot,” said Liberty head coach Steve Hookfin. “We’re 6-2, and they are too. Their losses are to MBA and Arlington, and MBA beat Brentwood Academy.

“So they’ve had a tough schedule like we have.”

Hookfin said the players, who won Liberty’s district championship for the first time in five years, are proud of what they’ve accomplished but are focused on this week.

“That’s the good thing about having a schedule as tough as ours,” Hookfin said. “There’s no room for our guys to look ahead to the next opponent the following week because every team we play has the ability to beat us.

“Millington was a young team that we beat last year, but our guys hopefully will figure out before Friday they’re a better team that we’ve got to be mentally and physically ready to play with for 48 minutes.”

Chester County head coach Michael Hodum admitted his team hasn’t started the week preparing for its trip to University School of Jackson as well as he’d like, but he’s proud of what the team did last week when it put itself in position to win its first district championship with a win next week.

“They’ve got a lot of energy because they won a big game last week, and I’m glad to have to deal with that,” Hodum said. “There were some guys in there running around in the weight room when we really needed them to get on the weights and lift, which they did.

“But it’s time to get our minds right and look at this week and what we have ahead of us, and that’s a good team in USJ.”

USJ won a very close game over the Eagles last year in Henderson. Hodum said that game will probably be brought up this week, but he said no matter what kind of a team the Bruins field each season, he knows they will be good at what they do.

“When you have a coaching staff like [USJ head coach Mickey Marley] has over there, they’re going to teach their guys the fundamentals so well that no matter what they do or how physically talented they are, they’re going to be good at it,” Hodum said. “And even if they’re having a ‘down year’ and you’re not, they can beat you if you have a bad game but they continue to play with solid fundamentals.

“That’s the main reason they’re so consistently good. They may not have a Franklin Payne or a Jake Overbey or an Austin Orr on their team this year, but the guys they have do what they do well. That’s hard to stop.”

Milan got a big win that won’t help the Bulldogs win a district title, but it was a high-quality win that will help their playoff resume. This week, they’re on the road to play in the highest-profile rivalry of West Tennessee high school football when they visit Huntingdon.

Morris said Monday’s practice was somewhat stale, but he’s come to expect that after a win.

“As long as the focus is still there and the kids are learning, it’s OK,” Morris said. “They just need to be ready to work the rest of the week.”

The game with Huntingdon is a staple of every Milan season, and Morris said it’s just happened whenever it could happen.

“We’re going to play it if we can, and I know we have ever since I’ve been coach even though sometimes it might be early in the season or like this year real late,” Morris said. “Either way it’s a good test to see where we are early on or right before playoffs.”

It didn’t do any good last year as the Huntingdon game was essentially the game that knocked Milan from playoff contention, and Morris said the fact that Huntingdon lost this past week is a concern for him. But there’s still plenty for his team to play for.

“I haven’t looked at it, but people who have told me that if we win out we stand a good chance at hosting a playoff game,” Morris said. “I’d like to be able to do that, and I hope the kids would too.”

All four coaches said they’re glad to have a high-caliber opponent on the schedule to get them ready for anything they could encounter in the postseason.

“Our schedule has a lot of ground-and-pound teams on it, so we don’t see a lot of pass happy offenses,” Hodum said for Chester County. “USJ will be the best passing team we’ll see all year, and going up against a quarterback like [Easton] Underwood should wake our secondary up and hopefully make us better for when we meet up with a team like that in the playoffs.”

Brandon Shields, 425-9751