The Wild, Wild West that Class 2A football has become is our fan-voted WyoPreps ‘Game of the Week’ for week six.

The match-up features the top two teams in the 2A West Conference. The fifth-ranked Big Piney Punchers travel to Mountain View to face the defending champion and top-rated Buffalos at 3 p.m.

Mountain View enters with a 4-1 overall record. They are 4-0 in the conference. After opening the season with a loss at 3A Evanston, the Buffalos have rattled off four in a row against Lovell, Cokeville, Kemmerer, and Pinedale.

Big Piney is 4-1 on the season and 3-1 in the conference. The Punchers won their first four games against the Evanston JV, Thermopolis, Pinedale, and Lyman. They suffered their first loss last week against Lovell, 29-8.

WyoPreps’ David Settle had an opportunity to talk with both head coaches in the audio interview at the top of this story.

Mountain View’s Brent Walk touched on his team’s start coming off the loss of a lot of talent on last year’s title team, how they’ve adjusted, a couple of the Buffalos’ key players, and coach Walk had a lot of praise for Big Piney ahead of this game.

Punchers’ head coach Ryan Visser spoke about his team’s good start and their second-year in the system, some of his team’s top performers, what he sees in Mountain View, some of their keys, and coach Visser also talked about the how Class 2A is anyone’s guess at this time, but he does believe it goes through Mountain View.

Entering the match-up, Mountain View has the edge on the ground, as the Buffalos average 156.4 yards per game while Big Piney is at 72.8 rushing yards per game. The Punchers do have the third-best passing attack at 153.8 yards per game. The Buffalos throw for 131.2 yards per game.

Both teams allow significant yards per game on the ground, Mountain View is at 135.8, while Big Piney allows 152.2.

These are the top two pass defenses in Class 2A. The Punchers give up only 25.6 yards per game, while the Buffalos allow 64.2 yards a game.

Kaden Raza leads Big Piney. He throws for 142 yards per game with six touchdowns and four interceptions. His top weapons are Carlos Munoz and Dalton Bell. Defensively, Liam Hughes ranks third in Class 2A in defensive points per game, while Raza is also in the top 10.

New QB Connor Micheli leads the Mountain View offense. He throws for 124.6 yards per game and runs for another 60. Micheli has accounted for 11 TDs on the season. His top targets are Ashton Schofield and Bryson Walker. Sam Porter and Hunter Meeks anchor the Buffalos defense. They are both in the top 20 in defensive points for Class 2A.

This will be the 81st meeting between Big Piney and Mountain View. The series has been one-sided as of late, as the Buffalos have won 10 straight games over the Punchers. The last Big Piney win was in 2009. Overall, Mountain View leads 41-39 according to wyoming-football.com. The series dates back to 1955. The teams played twice a season for several years early in the series. Of note, they’ve played three state championship games against each other with Big Piney winning all three.

Kick-off is at 3 p.m. on Friday in Mountain View.

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