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SCOTS SCOOP
– Sept. 19, 2007
– Vol.
8, No. 7
BUCS STOPPED HERE, BUT PIOS WILL BE TOUGH FOE
When four trips to the "red zone" produce a total of three points, a
football coach has a right to be upset. Fortunately for MC head man
Steve Bell, that was the only dark cloud on an otherwise brilliant day
of – and for
– football
last Saturday.
On a gorgeous late summer afternoon, Monmouth dominated throughout in
a 45-0 victory over Beloit. The Fighting Scots’ rushing game clicked for
259 yards, freshman quarterback Alex Tanney (Lexington, Ill./Lexington)
passed for 316 more and the defense held the visiting Buccaneers to a
mere 141 yards. The Bucs gained just 59 yards on 40 carries and were
7-of-21 passing for 82 yards.
"Our defense was very, very good," said Bell. "As I told the guys, I
like the tempo we’re playing defensively. We’re getting a lot of guys to
the ball, and I like the energy they’re playing with. We had some
defensive linemen that really played a much better game than we’ve seen
previously this season."
Seven Scots recorded tackles for loss, including a trio of linemen
– junior Wes
Levy (Plano, Ill./Yorkville), sophomore Nick Leffler (Virginia Beach,
Va.) and freshman Peyton Lumzy (Dixon, Ill./Dixon). Levy and Lumzy had
two of Monmouth’s five sacks.
While the defensive line was getting into the backfield, the Scots’
offensive line was creating holes downfield. Junior Jeff Davis (Oswego,
Ill./Oswego), in particular, took advantage, rushing for a
collegiate-high 175 yards on 25 attempts and scoring two TDs. Backfield
mate Clay Bricker (Avon, Ill./Bushnell-Prairie City) also reached the
end zone twice, gaining 58 yards on nine carries.
"We ran the ball much better than we had previously, and that starts
up front," said Bell. "Our backs ran more physically and made quick
decisions."
Senior kicker Nate Palkovic (Peoria, Ill./Woodruff) made sure the
special teams also got their due, booting five PATs and a field goal to
become Monmouth’s all-time leading scorer. Palkovic now has 209 career
points, one ahead of Hall of Fame quarterback Mark Reed.
The fact that Palkovic was called on to try three field goals
– he missed two
– rather than
extra points was a sore spot for Bell, who saw his team come away with
no points after reaching Beloit’s 2, 16 and 20 on three separate drives.
The other series ended when Tanney threw his first interception of the
year on a tipped pass in the end zone.
"Again, we left a lot of points on the field," said Bell. "Hopefully,
that’s not going to be a recurring theme. Some of that is just our youth
on offense. We’ve got to learn how to finish. It’s going to come back
and bite us if we don’t shore it up."
The Scots did, however, record touchdowns on five other trips to the
red zone, and they quickly zipped through Beloit’s end of the field on
their other score, a beautiful 82-yard strike from Tanney to sophomore
Nick Wright (Canton, Ill./Canton), who led Monmouth’s receivers with 112
yards. Sophomore Kyle Wantland (Fisher, Ill./Fisher) caught eight passes
for 95 yards and junior Bobby Gibbs added five receptions for 55 yards.
Senior Jess Miller (Monmouth, Ill./Monmouth) and freshman Matt Shepherd
(Leesburg, Fla./Leesburg) had two catches apiece, and Shepherd also
contributed on special teams, returning a punt 39 yards to set up a
Monmouth touchdown right before halftime.
"We always want to make gradual progress, and I think we’re doing
that," said Bell. "We’ve got to continue to elevate our game."
That is certainly true this week, as Monmouth visits another of the
Midwest Conference’s 2-0 teams, Carroll. The Pioneers, who are 2-1
overall, own a 42-0 victory over Grinnell and a 35-6 defeat of Beloit.
They are tied with the Scots atop the league along with St. Norbert,
Illinois College and Ripon. The Blueboys and Red Hawks also meet
Saturday.
"I like their athletes, and I always have," said Bell, who’s team
topped Carroll 38-7 last year at Monmouth. "Schematically, they’re
extremely sound and solid. (Chris) Rogers is a very, very good
quarterback. We’ve definitely got a challenge on our hands."
For the season, Rogers has thrown for 473 yards and three scores.
Four receivers have yardage totals between 96 and 111 yards, including
Bryce Crocker, who leads the Pioneers with 377 rushing yards and seven
TDs.
Rogers, Crocker, tight end Josh Gould and linemen Corey Drake and Dan
Barmantje are all former All-MWC picks on the offensive side of the
ball. Brocke Linde and Jake Zeh have won the league’s last two Defensive
Performer of the Week honors, and others to watch are all-conference
selections Tim Keane, Jeremy Winter and Isaac Hamilton. Kicker Brian
Jachimek is also one of the league’s best.
Against a team with so much talent, Bell was asked what might be a
key to the contest.
"Starting off fast," he replied. "We can’t have a lull early. We have
a trend of starting very quickly up there, and we hope it continues. We
match up really well with them. It should come down to who’s going to
bring a more physical game, who’s not going to turn the ball over and
who’s going to make some big explosive plays."
When all’s said and done, Bell hopes his team puts more points on the
Schneider Stadium scoreboard than it leaves on the field. And if those
points are more than the Pioneers’ total, the Scots will return to
Monmouth still atop the Midwest Conference.
LOSS HURT, BUT SPIKERS WIN THREE OTHERS
Monmouth’s volleyball week started with a straight-set win over
Eureka last Thursday and ended with a 3-0 victory Tuesday night at
Lincoln Christian. Sandwiched in between was a Saturday split vs.
Cornell and Augustana. You might not want to mention "sandwich" and
"Augustana" in the same sentence to coach Kari Shimmin, though.
"We didn’t show up against Augustana," she said of her team’s 30-16,
30-23, 30-13 loss. "That’s all I can say. I couldn’t even watch much of
the video of that match. I was getting a stomach ache. We really
struggled with ball control, and it was the whole team, not just one
person."
Things went much better in the rest of Monmouth’s matches, in large
part due to the strong play of senior middle hitter Kendra James
(Fulton, Ill./Fulton). James led the Scots in kills in all four matches,
including 14 on a sizzling .523 hitting percentage vs. LCC. She tied
freshman Alyson Schroeter’s nine kills vs. Eureka and added seven
blocks.
"We played very well in the Eureka match," said Shimmin. "We had no
letdowns, and after we started out down three points in the first set,
we didn’t let them get much more than two points in a row the rest of
the way."
In the 3-1 win over Cornell, James had 15 kills while hitting .394,
but she was held to just seven kills vs. Augustana, as Monmouth hit just
.054 as a team.
Other statistical leaders for the Scots’ four matches included junior
Crystal Myers (Byron, Ill./Byron), who had 72 digs; junior Amanda
Boonstra (Fulton, Ill./Fulton), who had 59 digs and eight aces; senior
Colleen Wilkin (Fulton, Ill./Fulton), who had 71 assists; and hitters
Tanesha Hughes (Peoria, Ill./Woodruff) and Ashley Yeast (Sciota,
Ill./West Prairie), who had 29 and 26 kills, respectively.
Up next for Monmouth, which is now 9-3 on the season, is a road trip
to Wisconsin to play Ripon and Carroll this Friday and Saturday.
TWO 5-4 MATCHES GO SCOTS’ WAY
In his preseason comments, women’s tennis coach Kerry Frantz talked
about this season’s team turning around some of their results from a
year ago. So far, his Scots have fallen by the same 5-4 and 8-1 scores
they did against MWC South rivals Lake Forest and Grinnell last year,
but they did close the gap on Beloit, taking two matches on Sunday after
being defeated 9-0 in 2006.
And against a pair of schools the Scots didn’t face in 2006
– Illinois Wesleyan
and Lawrence –
Monmouth’s increase in talent was definitely on display. The Scots
picked up 5-4 victories over both foes, led by No. 3 and 4 players
Brittany Donnelly (Metamora, Ill./Metamora) and Anne Speer (Macomb,
Ill./Macomb), who each won both of their singles matches. Both players
also picked up one doubles win apiece in the victories, with Speer
teaming with junior Maddie Ethington (Orland Hills, Ill./Andrew) to top
IWU 8-3 and Donnelly and classmate Cassie Frantz (Macomb, Ill./Macomb)
winning 8-4 at No. 1 doubles vs. Lawrence. In the most recent
Monmouth-Lawrence meeting in 2005, the Vikings had topped the Scots 6-3.
Just like a year ago, Donnelly and Frantz picked up the lone point
vs. Grinnell, posting a convincing 8-4 triumph last Saturday. Their
doubles record stands at 4-4 on the year.
Donnelly added a singles win during the Beloit match, which was
closer than the final score of 7-2 indicated. Ethington very nearly won
both her singles and doubles matches, which would have pulled the Scots
to a 5-4 deficit. She lost a third set supertiebreaker in singles, and
she and Speer fell 9-8 at No. 3 doubles.
Other winners for the week included freshman Emily Isaacs (Rock
Island, Ill./Rock Island), who posted singles and doubles victories in
the IWU match and also won her singles match vs. Beloit; Frantz, who won
at No. 1 singles vs. Lawrence; and freshman Kim Wegner (Dixon,
Ill./Dixon), who won at No. 2 singles vs. LU and No. 2 doubles vs. IWU.
The Scots will take a 2-3 record into action today against Knox.
Monmouth then hosts Illinois College on Thursday and plays St. Ambrose
and Augustana on Saturday.
THEIR GOAL IS TO DENY YOURS
The record for the fewest goals allowed by a Monmouth men’s soccer
team is 23, set during the 1995 season. At their current pace, coach
George Perry’s Fighting Scots are going to shatter that goal.
Through five games, Monmouth has allowed just four scores. Two of
those came in last Saturday’s 2-0 loss vs. Central, but the Scots came
back to keep Coe off the scoreboard for 110 minutes in a 0-0
double-overtime tie on Sunday. Tuesday at Grinnell, Monmouth was again
involved in a scoreless game until lightning postponed play late in the
first half. No date has been set to play the remainder of the contest.
The Scots’ scoreless string is now at 232:28 heading into Sunday’s
home match vs. Cornell. That is approaching a record, as Monmouth has
never posted more than two shutouts in a row in team history.
Goalkeeper Owen Robinson (Bourbonnais, Ill./Bradley-Bourbonnais) has
been a big part of the Scots’ defensive success. The sophomore came up
big throughout the Coe match en route to posting 10 saves and, despite
the two goals allowed vs. Central, he also made some memorable stops in
that match, helping the Scots keep the game scoreless through halftime.
While the team’s stingy defense is the good news, the flip side is
that Monmouth has struggled to score. The Scots didn’t put the ball in
the back of the net during the past week, or in a Sept. 8 loss vs.
Dubuque, making sophomore Danny Davis’ goal against Mt. Mercy on Labor
Day the last time a Monmouth player has scored.
The Scots will take a 1-2-2 record into the Cornell match, and
they’ll host Loras at Peacock Park next Tuesday.
PLAN B HAS SCOTS BACK IN GEAR
(Editor’s Note: This fall, the women’s soccer updates will be written
in first-person form, as the coach, Barry McNamara, is also the editor
of Scots Scoop.)
The title of last week’s women’s soccer article was "Back to the
Drawing Board," and that’s exactly what we did after a pair of losses to
Dubuque and Millikin. We now have a few players in different spots, and
the team feels good about the changes. When we’ve stayed in our new
alignment for an entire half, we’ve only allowed one goal in 135
minutes.
That score came in the final minute of the first half at Coe on
Sunday and allowed the Kohawks to pull even at 1-1. We had started the
scoring in the 10th minute of the match on junior Sarah Kisner’s
terrific free kick goal. We limited Coe to just three shots over the
match’s final 65 minutes, and just five for the match, but we could not
knock home the go-ahead score and came back from Cedar Rapids with a 1-1
tie.
The day before, we outshot Central 7-3 during a scoreless first half,
and we were feeling pretty good about the flow of play at halftime. But
the Dutch scored 10 minutes into the second half, and I took a gamble
with our new formation that wound up not paying off. Like a football
coach who decides to go for a two-point conversion too early in the
game, I broke up the formation and pushed some extra players into the
attack immediately following Central’s score, rather than staying
patient. The Dutch took advantage, scoring twice more to put the wraps
on a 3-0 victory.
Although the 0-1-1 weekend was not exactly what we were shooting for,
the games will have a tremendous benefit for us. We got to test our new
playing style against two quality teams, and we should now be ready to
go today for our Midwest Conference opener against Illinois College in
Jacksonville. Our overall record entering the match is 2-3-1.
GOLFERS HOVER AROUND SAME SCORE AT IC
To open the season, the women’s golf team posted scores of 389 and
386 at The Links Golf Course in Jacksonville.
Monmouth was back on familiar ground Tuesday, playing in another
event at the course, and the Scots posted a score of 390 to place third
in the five-team field.
Leading the way was sophomore Megan Pickrel (Galesburg,
Ill./Galesburg), who carded a 95 to tie for 15th. Monmouth’s other
counters were senior Kathleen Woolley (96) and juniors Heidi Hartshorn
(99) and Jessica Sackville (99).
The Scots return to action this weekend to play in the UW-Whitewater
Fall Invitational at Prairie Woods Golf Course in Avalon, Wis. A year
ago, Monmouth shot rounds of 398 and 401 at the course. |
