BLACKSVILLE, W.Va. – Corey Coen wasn’t perfect Friday night, far from it. His Clay-Battelle teammates were right there in that same boat.

There may have been no more of a gutsier performance, though, than what the Class A No. 3-ranked Cee-Bees displayed during their 16-8 victory against Class AA No. 13 Oak Glen.

That was confirmed in the postgame handshake, when Oak Glen head coach T.J. Miller looked straight at C-B head coach Aarlon Lapoe and said, “You just bullied us.”

“That was pretty cool to hear,” LaPoe said. “We’ve been preaching to our guys the whole year about toughness. That was a better football team that we just beat, and it was because our guys just kept believing and wouldn’t quit.”

With the win, the Cee-Bees (8-1) will now have a stranglehold on the No. 3 ranking and will remain there providing they finish the regular season with a win against Magnolia next week. It would be the highest ranking in school history.

“Our goals this year were to host playoff games and win games we weren’t supposed to win,” Coen said. “I’m really just so proud of our team right now for fighting the way they have.”

The Clay-Battelle junior quarterback was the catalyst of that fighting spirit against the Golden Bears (7-3), finishing with 119 yards passing and two touchdowns, while also adding 113 yards on the ground on 17 carries.

He connected with Cody Clovis on a 51-yard bomb a few minutes into the second quarter to give the Cee-Bees an 8-0 halftime lead. Coen then found Trey Huggins for an 18-yard touchdown strike with 8:31 remaining in the game for the winning score.

That’s the official stats, but they don’t come close to telling the story of the game. By LaPoe’s own words, Oak Glen was bigger, faster and had more depth than what’s found on the Cee-Bees’ roster. The Golden Bears had a stud at tailback in senior Logan Murray, who finished with 196 yards and a touchdown on 22 carries.

“He may be one of the best running backs in the state,” LaPoe said. “When we saw him on film, we knew it was going to be a great challenge for our defense.”

That challenge became real pretty quick, as Murray and the Golden Bears began to rip off one chunk play after another. They had 122 yards of offense by the end of the first quarter.

But no points, which is a credit to an opportunistic C-B defense. Clay-Battelle linebacker Jaxon Huggins stripped Murray of the ball on Oak Glen’s first possession and returned it 48 yards to end that drive.

Early in the second quarter, Murray was on his way to the end zone, but was hit at the 1-yard line and fumbled again. This time the ball went through the end zone for a touchback.

C-B defensive back Braden Ponceroff also came up with an interception with 44 seconds remaining in the first half after Oak Glen had driven the ball to the C-B 25-yard line.

“Sometimes it’s just better to be lucky,” LaPoe said. “I wasn’t freaking out. I thought our defense was adjusting to things. I thought we began to limit them a little more after that first quarter.”

Oak Glen, which tied the game on Murray’s 20-yard run to open the third quarter, finished with a 459-293 advantage in yards, but Murray’s dash to the end zone was the Golden Bears’ only points of the night.

Coen put matters into his own hands from there. Of his 113 yards rushing, 98 came in the second half, all of them on quarterback power plays where C-B simply lined up its strongest players on one side and Coen ran right behind them.

“Early on, we tried to be more dynamic with some things and mix the run and pass,” LaPoe said. “Corey made some good throws, but we just had some drops. To win this game, we had to be able to run the ball and Corey just has a knack for finding space and getting upfield.”

And then he hit Huggins for the go-ahead score with a bullet pass down the right side. Huggins hauled it in and worked his way through some Oak Glen defenders for the touchdown.

“We truly believed that if we kept working, kept grinding and kept believing in each other, good things were going to happen,” Coen said.

The Golden Bears tried to answer back and drove as far as the C-B 27, but Murray came up inches short on a fourth-and-three run and the Cee-Bees ran out the clock by gaining two first downs before taking two knees.

“I just thank our kids,” LaPoe said. “We’ve got a good team. We’ve got good players and there’s good leadership in our locker room and they’re doing things the right way. I’m really just happy to play a part in it.”

Oak Glen: 0-0-8- 0-8

Clay-Battelle: 0-8-0 -8-16

SCORING

C-B-Cody Clovis 51 pass from Corey Coen (Caleb Snodgrass run)

OG-Logan Murray 20 run (Maddox Bowen run)

C-B-Trey Huggins 18 pass from Coen (Coen run)

INDIVIDUAL LEADERS

RUSHING: Oak Glen-Murray 22-196 TD, Jacob Everett 13-65, Cameron Carter 4-37, Bowen 5-5. Clay-Battelle-Coen 17-113, Caleb Hall 10-36, Snodgrass 2-7, Huggins 1-5, Colt Sandy 1-5, Team 2-(-2).

PASSING: Oak Glen-Bowen 5-12-1 56. Clay-Battelle-Coen 4-12-1 119 2 TD, Cooper Statler 1-1 12.

RECEIVING: Oak Glen-Carter 3-39, Chase Hartung 2-17. Clay-Battelle-Clovis 1-51 TD, Braden Ponceroff 1-49, Huggins 2-30 TD, Cooper Payton 1-1.