By Buddy "Friday Night" Cobb, Williamson County Bureau
MARION, Ill. — Turnovers cost Marion football a clean night, but the Wildcats didn't need clean. They needed yards, and they got them on the ground in a win over Belleville West that sends the team into its South Seven Conference opener with real momentum, according to the Southern Illinoisan.
The running game did the heavy lifting, the paper reported, giving Marion's offense a physical identity heading into conference play — the stretch of the schedule where records get made or broken in this part of the state.
A conference opener is never just another Friday. For a program building confidence, it's the first real test of whether preseason progress translates when the standings start counting. Marion will find out soon enough.
— Compiled from reporting by the Southern Illinoisan.
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