EMU 21, Buffalo 17 recap — Ontario Sandwich Trophy retained!

First and foremost, our thoughts go out to Arrington Hicks. With 49 seconds left and EMU up 4 points, Hicks took a bad hit. He was down on the field for a very long time, and though the WEMU announcers said they saw him move his legs a little, the ambulance was brought on to the field and he was strapped to a full body brace before being wheeled onto the ambulance and off to the hospital. The word later was that Hicks was knocked temporarily unconscious, and when he came to he had a tingling sensation, and was hospitalized as a precaution.

The game ball — unfortunately there’s just one — has got to go to Dwayne Priest, who had a career day in his penultimate game as an Eagle.  His 190 yards and 3 touchdowns on 33 carries were all personal bests, and I’ve got to guess that he’s the front-runner for MAC West Division Offensive Player of the Week, his second such honor. Honorable mention goes to the o-line for opening up all those holes for Priest to run through.

EMU’s defense was respectable, or maybe Buffalo’s offense is just that bad. They did allow Jerry Davis to look like a real MAC quarterback, but they also held the Bulls to six three-and-outs, which is pretty good.

The weakest point for EMU was probably Gillett’s passing, particularly in the first half, in which he completed 3 of 6 for 39 yards and 2 interceptions, good for a whopping 37.9 quarterback rating. He did turn things around at half time, completing 3 of 3 for 53 yards in the second half, and if you’re counting along, that’s a 248.4 rating in the second half, for a respectable 108.1 overall.

There’s not really that much more to say about this game, which is disappointing since it’s nice to write about a win for a change. EMU ran the ball 55 times, 86% of their offensive plays, and averaged 4.8 yards per carry — that really tells the whole story for EMU’s offense today.