by John Locke, SIU Carbondale Associate Sports Information Director

CARBONDALE, IL – The Southern Illinois football program rolled to a 55-3 season-opening win over Mississippi Valley State on Saturday night in Saluki Stadium.

SIU Running Back DJ Davis off to the races in last night’s win over Mississippi Valley State, (siusalukis.com photo)

“You never take winning for granted,” SIU football head coach Nick Hill said. “This is why we do it. It doesn’t matter what the score is. You’re only guaranteed 11 games in college football. Anytime you can get a win, it feels great.”

After waiting an extra week to play–Southern’s bye week was Week 1 of the season–the Salukis dominated from the start. SIU won the toss and took the opening drive of the season 75 yards in six plays. Hans Carmien scored the first touchdown, barreling over a Delta Devil defender to get to the goal line. Southern Illinois kept rolling from there. At halftime, SIU held a 41-3 lead, and most starters did not play in the second half.

“We were able to establish the football game in the first half. We ran the football,” Hill said. “Then, we were able to play a ton of players. I think (Hall-of-Fame broadcaster Mike Reis) said 25 players had a tackle. We were able to play everybody who dressed, and that was big. We built some depth.”

Strikingly, the Southern Illinois defense held MVSU (0-2) to negative-eight rushing yards on the game, while Southern’s offense piled up 285 yards on the ground. Southern’s defense held a Division I opponent to negative-eight or fewer rushing yards for the first time since 2000.

Everyone got in on the fun. Nearly 70 players saw action in the game for SIU. Southern’s eight touchdowns were scored by seven different players. Southern had an astounding 16 tackles for loss–and 16 different players contributed to at least one.

Several SIU defenders dive to recover a fumble in last night’s win over Mississippi Valley State (siusalukis.com)

“We’ll look back, and some of those players that were in during the second half will hopefully help us win football games late in the season,” Hill said. “We play in the Missouri Valley, and it’s a tough league. It’s a physical league. Anytime you play college football, there will be injuries. I tell the team all the time, ‘The team that’s coming in doesn’t care about that.’ It’s next man up, or we won’t be that good.”

Southern’s road gets tough quickly. The Salukis head to Southeast Missouri for a regional rivalry next Saturday. Kickoff against the Redhawks is set for 6 p.m. SIU hasn’t won a road game since 2014 and is looking to snap a 12-game road losing streak.

“How are we going to turn around and get better from this?” Hill said. “Our schedule is set up so if we don’t do that, the team we’re playing will beat us. Even though we’re young, the guys understand it takes a great week of preparation and then 60 great minutes, sometimes more, of full concentration on every single rep.”

NOTES

SIU improved to 34-4 in regular season non-conference games since 2002 (excluding FBS opponents) … SIU is 15-1 in its last 16 home openers … Southern is 31-8 (.795) under the lights in Carbondale since 2002 … True freshmen Chucky Sullivan, Sam Thompson, E’Mare Hogan, Dan Heilbron and Jaylin Wilson all played … Six starters were first-time starters (39 players on SIU’s 102-man roster have started at least one career game at SIU) … Dating back to last season, SIU has won three of its last four games, something the program last accomplished in September 2014 … SIU held a Division I opponent without a touchdown for the first time since 2012 (W, 35-0 vs. WIU).

http://www.dailyregister.com/sports/20170902/eldorado-rolls-to-win-34-15-at-vienna-goreville

VIENNA, IL –  (Michael Dann, Harrisburg Register.  Please click on the link above for the full story.  Here is an excerpt below.)

Playing at Vienna-Goreville comes with a unique set of circumstances that any Black Diamond Conference School is well aware of.

Before the game, Eldorado’s leading rusher Jacob Traxler’s helmet was accidentally ran over by the team bus, but the senior back got help from a teammate with a new lid and ran for 131 yards on 10 carries and had three touchdowns in the win.

Eldorado, who finished with 319 yards on the ground, served notice early, taking a 20-0 lead before Vienna-Goreville got on the scoreboard and for first year head coach Joe Clark says his team is still developing.

“Overall, we are doing a good job running the football and when we want to are able to take advantage in the passing game. We continue to grind, but we made some mistakes, myself included and starting with me that we were able to recover from. We had a lot of kids step up Vienna-Goreville head coach Mike Rude said Saturday’s contest with a measuring stick game for his club, one where he considers Eldorado to be the No. 1 or No. 2 team in the conference.

“I would say a lot of people are going to pick Traxler to Player Of The Year in the conference. He’s a D1 football player and he’s a load. I didn’t really feel like the score should have been what it was at halftime. We learned a lot of things today, we said this was our measuring stick and we know where we’re at now.”nd that was nice to see.”

http://www.randolphcountyheraldtribune.com/sports/20170902/fairfield-pulls-away-in-second-half-sends-yellow-jackets-to-0-2

CHESTER, IL –  (Randolph County Herald-Tribune.  Please click on the link for the full story.  Here is an excerpt below.)

Quarterback Nick Meyer threw for 201 yards and three touchdowns, but Fairfield pulled away in the second half of a 56-22 win over Chester in the Yellow Jackets’ home opener on Friday

They’re good at what they do,” said Chester coach Billy Belton of Fairfield. “They run that super power real well and that counter and I thought they had 20 more offensive plays than we did and they just wore us down.”

Up next for Chester is a road trip to McLeansboro next Friday, where the Yellow Jackets will face another 0-2 team in Hamilton County. The Foxes were shut out by Johnston City, 14-0, on Friday.

“What I’ve seen is they’re a pistol, veer-option type team,” Belton said of Hamilton County. “Kind of like what we do.”

http://www.dailyregister.com/sports/20170902/du-quoin-uses-big-second-half-to-down-bulldogs

HARRISBURG, IL (Harrisburg Register. –  Please click on the link for the full story.  Here is an excerpt below.)

Du Quoin fumbled five times, Harrisburg threw two interceptions, and the clubs combined for 21 penalties, but it was still an exciting Friday night at Taylor Field when the Indians were able to hang on for a 33-27 win over the Bulldogs in Week 2 prep action.

HHS (1-1) jumped out to a 14-0 lead after the first quarter and led 20-14 at intermission before Du Quoin (2-0) started a second half rally which was led by its defense.

The positives that we can take from this are that we found a way to win,” said Du Quoin coach AJ Hill. “A lot of things didn’t go our way, we didn’t play very well. We had a lot of penalties and put ourselves in a lot of bad situations right off the bat, but I’m just proud of the way our guys fought back and didn’t let the momentum shifts keep us down.”

“We put ourselves in a position to win, and we were pretty close,” said Harrisburg coach Gabe Angelly. “We told our defense all week long that if we focused on making them have long drives, that they were going to turn the ball over. They didn’t have to do that in Week One. So our gameplan worked out there, but when we stalled out a few different times in a row, and they had the ball in our territory in the second half, especially. We just didn’t execute coming out of halftime.”