MONMOUTH, Ill. — Thanks to an upsetting
44-28 loss at Beloit last weekend, the Fighting Scots football team
no longer has hopes of a 7-3 season. Thanks to Lake Forest’s
stunning 20-18 victory over Ripon the same day, Monmouth knows it
will be very fortunate to avoid an 0-5 start.
The Foresters, who will visit Bobby Woll
Memorial Field Saturday, moved to 4-0 on the year by overcoming a
411-171 deficit in yards gained against favored Ripon. LFC kicker
Pat Dunne booted a 44-yard field goal with 3:46 to play that stood
up as the game-winner, despite a visit into the red zone by the Red
Hawks in the final minute.
The Scots’ rugged early-season schedule was
supposed to have ceased by now, but with the perfect record turned
in by Lake Forest, Monmouth’s first five foes are a combined 14-5.
“They throw the ball,” said MC coach Steve
Bell of the Foresters. “They spread it out and throw the ball out of
the shotgun. They’re going to be a different offense than we’ve
played so far.”
The Foresters are quarterbacked by Dan
Lackey, who is 61-of-154 this season for 704 yards and seven TDs.
His most dangerous weapon is Mike Fitzgerald, who has 28 receptions
for 361 yards and five scores. Two of those touchdowns came late in
the fourth quarter against Beloit this season, lifting Lake Forest
to a 24-23 victory. Another weapon when LFC has the ball is Dunne,
who’s made five of his seven field goal attempts this season and
gives the Foresters a chance to score any time they get inside the
opponents’ 30-yard line.
Defensively, a special linebacker leads Lake
Forest. Casey Urlacher, brother of Chicago Bear superstar Brian
Urlacher, leads the Midwest Conference in tackles with 54. Urlacher
also sees spot duty on offense, where he has scored three touchdowns
this year, and on special teams, where’s he returned two kickoffs
for 55 yards.
Like his big brother, Urlacher is known for
making plays, and that quality is exactly what Bell feels is missing
from the 2002 Scots.
“The kids that we know can make plays aren’t
making plays,” he said after the disappointing loss to Beloit. “We
know they can play better. We’ve just got to pull it out of them.”
Making plays doesn’t always mean scoring
touchdowns. Defensively, Bell would’ve been happy with a key stop or
two against Beloit, but instead the Buccaneers were 12-of-19 on
third down conversions. Two of the seven conversions they missed
were converted one play later on fourth down for touchdowns – a
short run by former Cambridge High School quarterback Nate Skelton
and a 9-yard TD pass from Skelton to tight end Mike Wolfgram.
“We’d get them in situations we wanted them
in, but then we didn’t make any plays,” said Bell. “Third-and-long
is not their forte, and allowing them to go 12-of-19 is
unacceptable. You can’t do that.” Half of the Bucs’ conversions came
when they needed seven yards or more.
Another thing a team can’t do and expect to
win is fall short in the turnover battle. Monmouth fumbled three
times in the first half at Beloit, and a turnover in the final
minute of the first half led to a key Beloit score and a 28-14
deficit with two seconds left in the second quarter. In their first
four games, Monmouth is minus-6 in the turnover category and has
lost in that department every week. Meanwhile, the Foresters are a
plus-3 on the season.
Still another category where the Scots have
struggled – particularly last week – is time of possession. Monmouth
had the ball for less than 20 minutes against Beloit despite running
the ball a season-high 39 times.
“We ran the ball because we could,” said
Bell, who saw Todd Sabean have a breakout game with 193 yards on 27
totes. “We had to keep our defense off the field because Beloit was
getting 9-, 10- and 11-play drives. If we hadn’t run the ball, our
defense would have been on the field all game.”
As it was, the Bucs had four drives of 10
plays or more, wearing the Scots down on a hot September afternoon.
That explains, in part, how the Bucs were able to break away from a
tight 31-28 lead with two fourth quarter scoring drives that covered
55 and 65 yards and took a combined 16 plays and 8:26.
Besides Sabean, other bright spots for
Monmouth included a blocked punt by Scott Stanton that Rob Rogers
turned into a 20-yard return TD and scoring receptions by two
members of Monmouth’s deep corps of receivers, Matt Hammer and Jason
Killion. Ryan Wood led the Scots with three receptions for 47 yards
and moved into 10th place on the all-time receiving yardage honor
roll at Monmouth with 931.
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