Eagles Expect To Soar Over Mountaineers

“Bigger, faster, stronger, better.” Eastern Washington University football coach Mike Kramer is saying all the right things about Eastern Oregon.

But the comparisons are being made to Rocky Mountain College, an NAIA school the Eagles blitzed 63-7 in their season opener last weekend.

So don’t look for the NAIA Mountaineers to offer much more resis tance than the outgunned Bears when they invade Woodward Stadium for tonight’s 6:35 matchup against an EWU team ranked 23rd in this week’s ESPN/USA Today Division I-AA rankings.

At best, EOU could test Eastern’s defensive discipline.

First-year coach Rob Cushman, who was promoted after serving as the Mountaineers’ defensive coordinator the past 10 seasons, is an advocate of the option and has installed a flex-bone offensive scheme similar to that used by Jerry Pettibone in his short stint at Oregon State.

“We won’t run into another option team all year, I hope,” Kramer said. “But this gives us a good opportunity to solidify our defense, because you have to be so fundamentally sound when facing the option.”

Kramer admitted he wouldn’t be as high on the idea of lining up and testing his defense against a Division I option team like Air Force.

“But every now and then you kind of need to do something like this,” he added. Kramer said he expects the Mountaineers to move the ball at times. “They have two quarterbacks,” he explained. “One (freshman starter Chuck Nyby) is a runner and the other (sophomore Jeff Olsen from Rogers High School) is a thrower. And we’ll probably see a lot of both of them.”

Moscow’s Justin Diedrick, a 5-foot-10, 225-pound senior, starts at nose guard for EOU. He is the son of University of Washington assistant coach Bill Diedrick, who quarterbacked EWU to an 11-1 record and a second-place finish in the NAIA playoffs in 1967.

“He’s an exceptional player,” Kramer said of Diedrick, who made 30 tackles and had a hand in four sacks last fall. “He’s active, strong and runs well to the football. He was a great player for them last year in their league.”

This will be EOU’s season-opener. The Mountaineers are coming off a 6-4 season that included a forfeit win over Chapman. Prior to that, they had suffered through 12 consecutive losing seasons that produced an overall record of 18-89.

Notes

EWU leads the series 8-3-1, but the two schools have not met since 1978 when both were members of the old Evergreen Conference. … Eagles tight end Tyson Knaevelsrud, who left last Saturday’s game against Rocky Mountain on a crash cart after suffering a severe fourth-quarter ankle sprain, has been cleared to play. … Eastern quarterback Harry Leons, after completing 14 of 21 passes for 252 yards and four touchdowns in last Saturday’s rout of Rocky Mountain, is the top-ranked Division I-AA passer in the nation with an efficiency rating of 230.32. … Griffin Garske, Leon’s backup, completed 15 of 19 passes for 191 yards and two TDs against the Bears and ranks No. 5 in the nation at 198.13.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: Eagles vs. Eastern Oregon