Story by Nick Kendall
Staff writer
The Murray State football team began its season with a 59-20 home win against the University of Pikeville Thursday night.
The first matchup between the teams saw the Bears get on the board first with a 42-yard field goal from Zaniel Phillips. The Racers countered instantly at the beginning of their first drive with a 95-yard kick return from sophomore defensive back Quinaz Turner.
The return showed fans that the Racers’ special team can keep things business-as-usual even though they took a big hit this summer with senior Malik Honeycutt being sidelined for most of the year with a knee injury.
Head Coach Mitch Stewart believes fan turnout was very high for the season opener.
“I think that was one of the bigger crowds we’ve had,” Stewart said. “Even larger than last year other than homecoming and family weekend, and on a Thursday night too that’s pretty impressive. We moved the students down—had the students sitting right behind our bench. I think they really enjoyed that. I know our team really enjoyed that atmosphere that they kind of created for us. Hats off to those guys. It was just a fun environment.”
A few unsportsmanlike conduct calls stained the Racers’ defensive sheet after penalties were given to Brion Sanchious, Levi Nesler and Nigel Walton.
Even though it was a good win, Stewart doesn’t want to see any penalties like that from his team again.
“We gave them two extended series of penalties,” Stewart said. “One on a fourth down and one on a third down, that cannot happen. Ridiculous football. We’ve got to clean that up.”
Penalties aside, the Racers managed to get 69 total tackles and two sacks for losses. They also made the Bears fumble three times and recovered all of them to regain possession.
Tonight was also redshirt sophomore Preston Rice’s first start as quarterback.
Rice racked up 170 passing yards from 20 completions in 31 attempts. He also finished the night with 50 rushing yards on 11 carries. Rice is playing exactly as Stewart expected.
“The thing that I’m the most pleased and impressed with is that he took care of the football,” Stewart said. “He went 20 for 31 and didn’t turn it over and really only made probably one or two poor decisions. That’s the type of player he is. I thought that he did a tremendous job of spreading the ball around and getting a lot of people involved.”
On top of their success through the air, the Racers ground game was just as successful, recording 249 yards of 36 team attempts. Junior running back Rodney Castille finished the game with the second-most team rushing yards with 63 in 10 rushes.
After seeing how effective its run game was, Murray State changed its gameplan and capitalized on each rushing attempt.
“We never really go into the game with a set-in-stone plan because things change throughout the game,” Castille said. “After the first drive, we came out with a couple of zones and we saw that it was hitting good and we could reach the front side and get it. So after that we just kind of adjusted our play calling and just carried on with it.”
The Racers will head “between the hedges” to play the No. 3 FBS contender University of Georgia Bulldogs at 3 p.m on Saturday, Sept. 7 , in Athens, Georgia.
