Week 2 reactions.

Its an odd day when you are disappointed in your team beating a clearly inferior opponent by a score of 47 to 21, racks up 399 yards on the ground, and had the game wrapped up by the end of 3 quarters.

All of those things are good. But there are still too many reasons to be left wanting from the team on both sides of the ball. Priority number 1 being the defense up the middle. While the score suggests a lop sided romp, the defense still gave up too many big plays against the run. Specifically allowing a lot of yards after initial contact. Neither Will Davis nor Brit Miller had what you would call a career day against the smaller and supposedly slower offense of EIU. Will Davis needs to move back to his DE spot, and get the injured Josh Brent back in. Arm tackles being broken and bad angles to the ball carriers resulted in the Illini giving up 173 yards on the ground, the second straight game it has given up 150. All of this with J Leman and Dick Butkus on the sideline looking on. There are better running backs than that of EIU coming this season, so seeing an EIU back streaming down the sideline or picking up 20 yards on a simple halfback screen it is not really encouraging.

On offense a sloppy performance in the first and fourth quarters kept the game even closer than it should be. Both Juice Williams and Eddie McGee put the ball on the ground during QB draws, and for the second week in a row, an INT is attributed to Juice because his reciever cant hold on the the ball that is throw to him. The new turf, as beautiful as it was, also caused some problems. Many times receptions and runs were cut several yards short because they slipped on the playing surface. It does take some time to get used to, but I hope it gets worked out soon.

On the plus side both Juice and Benn had very good games running the ball. There were not really any game changing big plays. Just consisntent play from a much larger and more athletic line against a 1-AA team that does have fairly good defensive backs. The slow pace and plodding but effective runs, from the entire stable of Illini HBs resulted in what can only be called the most boring offensive romp in football.

Football aside, the newly renovated stadium was beautiful. But there are clearly alot of kinks that still need to be worked out. There is a brand new stadium announcer who had trouble finishing his read through of the play before the next snap. The band was not miked up for the student section to hear, like it normally is. And most strikingly, the place was sleepy and silent. The new renovation has brought the capacity down by about 5 thousand and there were not too many occasions where the crowd could be considered a factor. There are of course the mitigating factors of it being an 11 am kickoff, a long, hot, day, and a good team playing sloppily against an opponent not many can get excited about.

In the end, a win is a win, and you had better take care of business against an FCS compass school. Next week is UL Lafayette and hopefully they will get all of the kinks worked out Football-wise and stadiumwise by next Saturday. The defense needs to get healthy and amped up. Hopefully 2 weeks of cupcakes will be enough practice for the Defense to show up for Penn State, otherwise there will be alot of triple digit days for opposing running backs come Big Ten season.