Eastern Illinois was 1-6 at this time last season. Now it’s 6-1 and can take the lead in the Ohio Valley Conference if it beats Western Kentucky on Saturday.
Western Illinois, picked by coaches and the media to finish fifth in the Gateway Conference, leads the league and has a No. 3 national ranking among NCAA Division I-AA schools.
Here’s a look at upcoming games involving the surprising Panthers and Leathernecks and other teams from Illinois:
Eastern Illinois: Sophomore quarterback Tony Romo from Burlington, Wis., and three freshman defensive stars from Florida have keyed the unexpected rise of coach Bob Spoo’s team (6-1, 4-0) as it heads to Western Kentucky (7-0, 6-0).
Romo, who passed for 295 yards in last week’s 27-16 victory over Tennessee Tech, ranks No. 1 among I-AA quarterbacks in passing efficiency. He directs I-AA’s top-scoring team, averaging 41.4 points per game.
On defense, linebackers Fred Miller and Nick Ricks and cornerback Antwan Oliver have blended well with their elders. Miller forced a fumble that Ricks returned 14 yards for a touchdown last week.
Western Illinois: Leathernecks coach Don Patterson says that a great player, such as linebacker Edgerton Hartwell, “is never, ever satisfied.”
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That must be the case. Hartwell wasn’t content when he made 20 tackles two weeks in a row against Southern Illinois and Southwest Missouri. So last week he made 21 tackles as Western (7-1) beat then-No. 2-ranked Youngstown State 24-10 for its seventh straight victory.
Hartwell will be shooting for a fourth straight 20-tackle game Saturday when the Gateway leaders meet Morgan State (1-6) in a non-conference game in Macomb, Ill.
Hartwell, a 6-foot-2-inch, 245-pound senior from Las Vegas, leads the Gateway with 109 tackles, 68 solo tackles and four recovered fumbles. He ranks among league leaders with two fumbles forced and three sacks.
Tailback Charles Tharp and punter Mike Scifres, respectively, lead Western’s offensive unit and special teams as Hartwell leads the defense.
Tharp, a 5-9, 195-pound California native who transferred from Hawaii, has rushed for an average of 129.8 yards a game. Scifres, who has a 42-yard punting average, was named Gateway special-teams player of the week for averaging 54 yards on three punts against Youngstown.
Southern Illinois at Illinois State: The Redbirds (3-4, 1-2) lead the Gateway with per-game highs of 32.1 points and 475.6 yards. They also became the first team in league history to win back-to-back shutouts.
Illinois State’s defensive player of the week, cornerback Alfred Corbin, was the architect of last week’s 64-0 of Prairie View. He returned one interception 40 yards for a score and another 40 yards to the 5-yard line. He also blocked the punt that Justin Frierson returned for a touchdown.
Sherard Poteete, the quarterback at Southern Illinois (2-5, 1-2), has 3,660 passing yards in his two-year career and needs only 120 more to pass SIU great Jim Hart and take over fourth place in the school’s history.
Northern Illinois: Huskies coach Joe Novak said his team “was flat” in its 52-22 loss at Western Michigan, but that “Western Michigan was the main cause of our flatness.”
Soundly beaten by the class of the MAC, the Huskies (4-3, 2-1) now try to sweep Buffalo (1-6, 1-3), Toledo, Eastern and Central Michigan to finish 8-3, 6-1.
Saturday’s home game marks the one-year anniversary of Thomas Hammock’s first carry. He finished last year with 23 for 81 yards. Last week’s 148-yard effort at Kalamazoo made his season’s total 776.
Cornerback Buster Sampson made 16 tackles at Western Michigan. He hopes they guys in front of him make the stops this week.