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Friday, October 31, 2008 11:04 PM CDT
Eastern still wants a winning season
By BRIAN NIELSEN, Sports Editor
bnielsen@jg-tc.com
CHARLESTON -- Scoring twice as many touchdowns as any Eastern Illinois teammate, Desmin Ward still isn’t having the freshman football year he envisioned.
“One of the main reasons I came here was the winning tradition,” the running back from Milwaukee’s Hamilton High School said.
But are the Panthers, 3-5 overall and 1-3 in the Ohio Valley Conference going into today’s 1:30 p.m. football game at O’Brien Stadium against Murray State.
Who knew back in August when EIU was in the top 25 NCAA Football Championship Subdivision preseason national rankings and organizing a reunion for football alumni for a program that has been to postseason playoffs six of the past eight years as well as players from the 1978 Division II national champions, that the current Panthers would merely be in a spoiler’s role.
That is the case today. Murray State has the same 3-5 record but at 2-2 in the OVC is among those still in the title picture in a league where all eight teams have at least one loss.
Still, coach Bob Spoo expects his current team to make a good showing in front of so many former players.
“There is a chance for a winning season and if that’s not enough we’re not worth the ground we’re standing on,” Spoo said.
“When we had only two (OVC) losses we felt we were still in it. Now we aren’t. I still want our guys to feel they are in the hunt for something and that’s a winning season.”
Eastern needs to win its last four games to post a fourth straight winning season.
Murray State, on the other hand, is trying to end its streak of three straight losing seasons.
The Racers may be turning the corner under Matt Griffin, the same coach who took a UT-Martin program that had not won an OVC game in six years and in his third season produced the Skyhawks’ first winning season since 1993 by going 6-5.
Now Griffin is in his third year of rebuilding a Murray State team that went 0-7 in the OVC the year before he moved from one conference school to another, 0-8 in his first year with the Racers and 1-7 last year.
Since a 63-38 loss to current OVC leader UT Martin, the Racers have posted conference wins over Austin Peay and Tennessee Tech and with a 31-21 loss came closer to Jacksonville State than Eastern did earlier in the year.
Today might determine whether the Racers have arrived as a legitimate contender already or have just gotten wins over the two teams tied for last in the OVC at 1-4.
Griffin wasn’t talking about anything other than the Panthers this week.
“You know what kind of respect I have for them and what they’ve done in this league,” the Murray State coach said. “We have tremendous respect for our opponent this week.”
Eastern, leading the OVC in passing defense allowing only 169.8 yards per game through the air, has to respect the fact Murray State leads the OVC averaging 247.9 yards per game passing.
Murray State also stands higher in the rushing list ranking fourth in the OVC with 150.4 yards per game while the Panthers stand sixth among nine teams averaging 116.8.
Running the football has been a sore spot most of the season for Eastern.
Senior Norris Smith, who two years ago ran for 656 yards and six touchdowns, was supposed to be Eastern’s leading running back at least until heralded Florida transfer Chevon Walker became eligible after completing the last three games of an NCAA suspension.
But an ailing back has kept Smith from stepping foot on the field for a game this year and a preseason ankle injury may be a factor in Walker, who totals 112 yards on 38 rushes and 118 yards on 10 pass receptions in four games, having yet to live up to his rating as the nation’s fifth best high school running back his senior year at Riverdale in Florida.
With an offensive line also riddled by injuries, senior Travorus Ward has stepped up as the OVC’s second leading rusher averaging 84.5 yards per game while the muscular freshman Ward has filled the short-yardage role scoring five touchdowns among his 51 rushes for 175 yards.
Despite their efforts, Eastern four games into this conference season has more losses than the three previous years combined.
“The attitude in the locker room is still good,” Ward said. “The seniors have taken over the leadership.
“We aren’t going to the playoffs but we want to get the winning season for coach Spoo and the seniors.”
Contact Brian Nielsen at bnielsen@jg-tc.com or 238-6856.
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