Football: Rocks blank Marshall
The red and yellow on the uniforms might have clashed with the orange and black surroundings, but Rock Island made the Soule Bowl their home away from home Friday night, beating Chicago Marshall 41-0.
And while playing at a different site didn’t disrupt the Rocks on game night, it did affect their routine.
“Yeah, we changed our routine up a little bit,” coach Vic Boblett said. “The kids have been lifting for X number of weeks, through summer camps. Their tired of hitting each other. The first game is exciting, no matter where it is. And I thought our kids played excited tonight.”
Ben Sparkman started the excitement with a 9-yard touchdown scramble and followed it up with a TD pass on the next series to Charles Nunn. From there, they never looked back.
“We knew they would start coming up eventually, and that’s when we started spreading the ball out and started passing and getting the ball on the outsides. We had an idea, but they could have came with anything,” Sparkman said. “I though we had a lot of good blocks up front on the line, up front was really good.”
And Sparkman excited his coach too.
“He did one of the things we were hoping he would do. We had one bad snap. His long 52-yard touchdown we had a bad snap on that play. That thing was bobbled and kind of up in the air. So, he took a bad situation and turned it into a great play,” Boblett said.
Rocky’s defense looked in midseason form, limiting Marshall quarterback Eric Givens to only two completions, both coming late in the fourth quarter.
“We’re real young. We had two freshman running backs going tonight,” Marshall coach William Gray said. “We just got to gel, We’re playing for the end of the season, for the playoffs.”
Marshall ended the game with four fumbles, six penalties for 30 yards and blocked punt that set up Kendrick Hearn’s touchdown to close the first quarter.
“I was happy when our kids saw a defense that they had never seen from these guys before reacted to it well,” Boblett said.
You have to throw out what happened last year when you play the first game of the year Boblett said.
“It’s a complete different defense than what they ran against us a year ago. That’s why always in a Game 1, we don’t put too much stock in the preparation in what you saw in the previous season, offensive philosophy, defensive philosophy, all those things can change and they did.”