By Bryan Bloodworth
NORMAL – Another week, another ranked opponent for Illinois State’s No. 3 nationally ranked football team Saturday at Hancock Stadium in a 2 p.m. Missouri Valley Conference game.
This time the opponent is Western Illinois, which moved into the national rankings this week at No. 20 after a 24-19 victory at Northern Iowa. The Leathernecks are 4-2 overall with its losses coming at Illinois and at Coastal Carolina, the No. 1 ranked team in the FCS.
ISU, which is celebrating its Homecoming, is 5-1 overall and tied at the top of the Valley with the Leathernecks at 3-0. The Redbirds have won 15 straight at home, the nation’s longest home winning streak in the nation in FCS circles.
Last year in Macomb, the Redbirds rallied to erase a 21-point deficit to earn a 37-34 win on Nick Aussieker’s 24-yard game-winning field goal.
“We had quite a game with them a year ago and we don’t expect anything less Saturday,” said ISU coach Brock Spack at his weekly news conference Tuesday. “Western has a powerful running game. They can run the ball inside really well. They try to pound the ball at you.
“They pride themselves on being a physical front. They move quite a bit on defense and try to create confusion with their front. They have a pretty good receiving corp. They have a lot of guys they can go to. They’ve been a balanced attack, more balanced than a year ago.
“And they’ve been pretty good at taking the ball away on defense, so we’ll have to be at our best. They have good kick returners again, so it will have to be a really good team effort to have a chance to be successful Saturday no doubt.”
Bryan Bloodworth can be reached at [email protected]
