Always a date to circle on the calendar, No. 5 Piscataway visits No. 8 Sayreville with a lot on the line for the playoffs

The Piscataway football team has a shot at a top seed in the state playoffs with a win Friday night. Sayreville appears locked in to a top eight seed and a first-round home game, but with this playoff system, who knows what can happen? Why chance it?

Just more fuel to the fire that is one of the classics in Middlesex County.

In Sayreville, it’s “Piscataway Week.” In Piscataway, it’s “Sayreville Week.” The coaches don’t need to talk about it. The players already know.

And so it goes for our Bellamy & Son Paving Big Central Game of the Week Friday night on Central Jersey Sports Radio: No. 5 Piscataway (7-1) and No. 8 Sayreville (6-2), with a ton on the line. You can hear the game live at 7 pm from Sayreville War Memorial Stadium with Mike Pavlichko on the call and Max Scheiner – in another classic GMC nod from their days together at WCTC Radio – on color. Pregame starts at 6:45; click here to listen.

Not only is this a highly-anticipated matchup, but one of the matchups to watch in the game will be Zaire Young and Sherwin Appiah – two great, thousand-yard runningbacks this year for the Chiefs and Bombers, respectively. This could be a game with some video-game like numbers if the offensive lines do their thing and both players go off.

There are more commonalities between the two. Each has lost to Old Bridge this season, and the all-time series is tied at 20-20 after Sayreville’s 42-24 road win last year. These two have alternated wins each of the last few seasons, so it’s been a very even series even of late.

Both are looking in championship form, and the last time they won sectional titles? It was – you guessed it – in the same year: 2018, a season in which Piscataway became the first – and remains the only – Middlesex County school to win 13 games in a season.

Click below to hear pregame interviews with both head coaches as they talk with Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko: