By Eric Stock
BLOOMINGTON – Illinois Wesleyan has pushed back the start of its football game at Millikin from its customary 1 p.m. start to 1:30 to account for homecoming festivities.
For a Titan football team that’s made a habit of being late arrivals this season, that might be a good thing.
The greatest example of that was last Saturday, when the Titans needed two touchdowns and a onside-kick recovery in the final 1:19 to win at Carthage.
“We’re more of a racehorse type offense and not a plow horse type offense,” coach Norm Eash. “We are a plow horse offense on Saturday.”
IWU overcame a slow start with two Jack Warner-to-Artie Checchin touchdown passes to rescue the game from the Red Men, stunning the homecoming crowd at Art Keller Field.
“When people say we got a wake-up call, I think there’s something to that,” Eash said. “I think we got our players attention that if we want to have the type of season we expect, that we want to be in the conference race, we can’t put ourselves in that situation again.”
The No. 17-ranked Titans look for a faster start on Saturday against Millikin in a College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin contest. The Big Blue has lost three straight after a season-opening win over Greenville, but Millikin has been tied or ahead in the fourth quarter of in each game, including last week’s 49-21 loss to No. 22 North Central. The Cardinals ended that game with 35 unanswered points in the final period.
“We tell our kids it’s King of the Mountain syndrome,” Eash said. “When you are undefeated and ranked, everyone wants a piece of you,” Eash said.
Junior linebacker Sean Garvey, who leads IWU with 28 tackles, said the Titans have to come out more aggressive on defense than last week against Carthage.
“We were on our heels a little bit and I didn’t feel that same kind of composure we usually have for whatever reason that was,” Garvey said. We were kind of all over the place and needed to settle down a little bit. We did eventually.”
Running back Maurice Shoemaker-Gilmore, a transfer from Division I Central Michigan, is leading the Titans with 266 rushing yards and three touchdowns. He said he doesn’t come to IWU with any personal goals in football.
“It’s like trick-or-treat with the siblings, you get home and you dump all the candy in a big pile, and that’s really how our statistics go,” Shoemaker-Gilmore said. “We don’t have any personal goals, we just want to help this team win.
Shoemaker-Gilmore, a business administration major, said his decision to come to IWU had more to do with life after football.
At part of homecoming festivities, IWU plans to honor all of its CCIW champions over the years, while the CCIW-championship football teams from the anniversary years of 1964, 1974, 1994 and 2009
will be honored at halftime, while those team captains will be honorary team captains for the game.
WJBC will have the broadcast starting with a 1 p.m. pregame.
Eric Stock can be reached at [email protected].
