Nick Kendall
Staff Writer
After an impressive win against Morehead State, Murray State football was on the other side of a 40-7 OVC-opening blowout against the UT-Martin Skyhawks.
The Racers’ only touchdown came in the second quarter via a 28-yard pass from redshirt sophomore quarterback Preston Rice to junior running back Rodney Castille.
The Racers put up 59 points last week compared to this Saturday’s seven and Head Coach Mitch Stewart admits that their performance was not good.
“My job is to get these guys ready to play and we were not ready to play tonight hats off to UT-Martin,” Stewart said. “They were better physically at the point of attack so we’ve got to improve in that area. Offensively we could never get a positive thing going. We just had too many non-hustling penalties and too many negative and bad plays especially in special teams. That’s really discouraging and really embarrassing just be perfectly honest.”
Offensively, the Racers only gained 267 total yards in 45 plays, 250 yards passing and 17 yards rushing. The team also fumbled the ball three times and recovered it only once.
The team only had possession of the ball for 14 minutes and 38 seconds. The Skyhawks maintained possession for the remaining 45 minutes and 22 seconds and finished the game with an even 500 yards in 95 plays.
The UT-Martin offense proved to be too much for the Racers as the Racers committed seven penalties, giving up 61 yards and three turnovers that the Skyhawks converted into 13 points.
Murray State’s defensive unit still put up some impressive numbers, as redshirt junior linebacker Anthony Koclanakis led the Racers with 18 tackles, redshirt senior linebacker Kendrick Catis was right behind him with 11 tackles, and senior defensive back Dior Johnson was third with 10 tackles.
Just like the losses against the FBS teams, Stewart plans to use this game as a learning experience.
“One game doesn’t define your season but it can if you let it,” Stewart said. That was really bad football that we just played and that’s not characteristic of us. What we have to do is we have to make sure that tomorrow, we come in with a purpose and a vision of letting this game develop us.”
The Racers are now 2-3, 0-1, and will head back home for a 1 p.m. matchup against Eastern Illinois University on Saturday Oct. 5 at Roy Stewart Stadium.
