Southern Illinois Game

Sat Oct 03, 2015 11:59 pm

Just got home a bit ago from having dinner with a bunch of the other band alumni.

Not going to spend the time to really dig into stats tonight, I'll save that for Monday probably, but I noticed that Lenoir had another 100+ yard game (120), and Nikko had another huge game with 179 yards and 2 TDs. Turnovers nearly killed us though.

For anyone who missed the last play, essentially they tried the hidden ball trick: we squib kick to them, whole team gets in a mini-huddle for a second and hides who's getting the ball, then they all split out in a bunch of different directions. Takes a second for the team to figure out which SIU guy has it, so he's able to get out to the side and does get out of one tackle, but they're able to wrap him up before he gets too far maybe 15 yards, back up to somewhere around their 40-45 yard line, and two more Leathernecks swarm him and wrestle him to the ground to end the game.

lovethenecks · Sun Oct 04, 2015 6:22 am

Re: Southern Illinois Game

Postby lovethenecks » Wed Sep 30, 2015 7:19 pm

I have evaluated this weeks game and am now ready to predict the score. I am going with a 28-27 win by SIU. Tough call but I think field position and special teams will cost us, could easily go 28-27 us. 2 very evenly matched teams.

Yes this is what I said on Wednesday prior to game and I was right on the money calling a 1 point game either way. Could have easily gone Southern way if not for Mr. Watson on last few runs setting up basically a PAT for the kicker. Now the facts:
Kicking game almost killed us again, blocked punt and terrible coverage on kick coverage late in the game. What is Lance doing fielding a punt on the 3 yard line? COACHING, COACHING COACHING. Unfortunately I called it early in the week, two evenly matched (BAD TEAMS) teams. Great news a win, great news we win this week, S. Dakota is terrible and we go 3-2. Bad news I only see Maybe 1 more win for 3-8 or 4-7. 4 Blocked Punts in a Season would get the coached fired, 4 in 4 games I don't know what they should do to them? Thank you past staff for recruiting Nikko and Kicker Nate

rocki · Sun Oct 04, 2015 7:25 am

Saw in the story on the homepage that Knuffman has had a hamstring injury. Wonder if that's the reason for the kicking/punting game to be so crazy?

sealhall74 · Sun Oct 04, 2015 9:35 am

I updated my normalized overall conference ranking stats sheets for the first time this season. After looking at them, I would have to agree that we are still a major "work in progress" as Coach N said during the week. If you want to see them, check out the StatsRank sheet (based on the StatsRaw sheet):

wiu712 · Sun Oct 04, 2015 9:38 am

Story about the game as seen on Saturday night's WGEM Sports with Sean Barie:
http://www.wgem.com/story/30180397/2015 ... -october-3

letsgonecks · Sun Oct 04, 2015 4:59 pm

The hamstring injury was the reason for the OR previously discussed. Believe the injury occurred at CCU during the second long kick return....not the TD. Knuffman was chasing and came up lame.

Don't believe it has anything to do with the kicking wows. Issue is coaching, formation on punting and personel. One if not all need to be changed. If you're not going to fire that person at least shift responsibility to someone else. I was actually shocked the game winning chipshot wasn't blocked.

Take the win though and had some positives. The last stop and last drive should build some good confidence that is hopefully needed and used down the tough stretch.

Mizzou Rah · Sun Oct 04, 2015 9:13 pm

Agree with Letsgonecks. The formations and timing of the punting game is way too slow. Hard to believe that in 3 years the kicking game is still this poor. Do NOT understand why Lenoir is not fair catching some of these punts. Then he catches a punt inside the 5 yard line. Blame this on coaching, way too many recurring mistakes. But, this was a HUGE win that Western does not win the previous years. Despite the errors the team showed great courage and togetherness. Great opportunity to go 2-0 in conference play this weekend.

yokedneck · Sun Oct 04, 2015 9:35 pm

yokedneck · Sun Oct 04, 2015 9:37 pm

The pregame sportsmanship was nice to see. Is that A MVFC thing?

Tom

Sun Oct 04, 2015 9:47 pm

Tom,
Yup, all MVFC games start with full-team handshake at midfield. I actually just wrote up something about it in a thread over on AnyGivenSaturday.com because the implementation of it is actually the result of an incident at a game at Hanson Field at the end of the 2002 season.

After defeating WKU 14-7 earlier in the season (at WKU), going 10-1 through the regular season, and demolishing Tony Romo's EIU Panthers 48-9 in the first round of the playoffs, Western Kentucky came into Macomb and after a long, rough, very heated game and a close WKU victory, a fight broke out involving many players, helmets being thrown, and the WKU "symbol" sledgehammer being swung around. Players were dismissed and suspended, and this game was the reason that all Gateway/MFVC football games since have started with the entirety of both teams meeting together on the field for full-team handshakes. WKU would go on to win the National Championship that year.

I'm sure a few other people on this board have some interesting memories from that game that they could mention.