SLIPPERY ROCK — Like it has been all season, much of attention of Friday night’s District 10 Class 3A quarterfinal will be on Oil City’s Ethen Knox, a junior running back who’s rumbled for 3,352 yards this go-round.

In other words, he’s run for — ahem — almost two miles of yardage in nine games. He’s the nation’s leading rusher, with over 300 more yards than the next-nearest guy.

Slippery Rock (5-4) will do its best to slow him down in the contest, which will be played at Titusville High School.

Last week, however, Slippery Rock wasn’t concerning itself with a kid whose numbers have been compared to Heisman-winning tailback Derrick Henry. Rockets coach Larry Wendereusz’s notion of a faceless opponent was as literal as ever.

Awaiting the District 10 playoff pairings, his team used a few days to work on themselves.

“You have that week off and you don’t really know who you’re going to play,” Wendereusz said. “We had an idea that it would be Oil City (7-2), but we weren’t going to spend the week preparing for Oil City and not have Oil City.

“We spent last week just preparing by getting ourselves better at our techniques, our schemes, and what we do.”

They also locked the tape away the tape from their regular season finale, a 41-0 defeat at Farrell.

“We didn’t play well and that’s a good football team,” Wendereusz said. “I think we literally spent ten minutes watching that film.

“It was just one we didn’t want to turn on, we didn’t need to turn on. We just needed to kind of move forward.”

In studying for the Oilers, Wendereusz and Slippery Rock have probably seen a lot of the same things. Oil City typically runs out of the “I” formation and, well, not much else.

“We really don’t run a whole lot of formations and we really don’t run a whole lot of plays,” Oil City coach Dan York said. “It’s a lot of repetition with our kids.”

While the Rockets’ William Mokel has slung the ball all over the yard this season, the Oilers have thrown a mere 29 passes. They’ve only completed five.

Knox has taken the bulk of the carries, while senior Cole Chelton and junior Kevin Pearsall have been utilized, as well. The unit has gone for 426.9 yards per game on the ground.

“Ethen can’t run if there’s not a hole there,” York said. “A lot of teams have gone to this spread where they want to run just a tiny bit and then throw the ball all the time. We’re kind of old school. We run the stuff they ran, heck, in the ‘70s and the ‘80s and the ‘90s.”

Junior tackle James O’Dell — who tips the scales at north of 300 pounds — was injured a few games ago. Senior Logan Suttle slid out to tackle from his interior spot and Brayden McFetridge moved to that guard spot, weighing considerably less at 190 pounds.

“I think what’s more impressive on that team is their front,” Wendereusz said. “Their front is extremely large. They’re extremely talented ... When you look at what they do and how they do it, we just need to make sure that, at the end of the day, we’re able to handle them up front.”

At the end of Thursday’s practice, Slippery Rock’s seniors were carried off the field, as per Wendereusz’s tradition. He wouldn’t mind if the senior salute turns into a weekly thing.

“My goal and my hope is that we’ll do it multiple times, not just once,” Wendereusz said.