Eastern’s in, but given unenviable task
The good news is Eastern Washington University is in the I-AA football playoffs.
The bad news is the 15th-ranked Eagles are playing No. 1 Southern Illinois.
But, to borrow one more cliché, to be the best, you have to beat the best.
“My first reaction is that I’m glad we’re in,” Eastern coach Paul Wulff said. “Now we just have to go to work and get ready for a football game. All the teams are good teams, so it doesn’t really matter who we play. We’re excited and now we have to prep for the game and go play our style of football.”
Still, the announcement on ESPNews Sunday morning was greeted with a few mummers but mostly stunned silence in the EWU football office where the coaches had gathered.
“No respect,” was the first comment.
Another asked, “I wonder why?”
One coach noted, “The 16 seed won last year, but we’re not a 16 seed.”
Most speculation had the Eagles playing third-ranked Western Kentucky (9-2) or No. 10 Sam Houston State (9-2), not the top-ranked Salukis (10-1), whose only loss was 23-22 to Division I bowl-eligible Northern Illinois.
The EWU-SIU game is Saturday in Carbondale, Ill., at 11:30 a.m. Pacific time. The winner moves on to face the winner of Western Kentucky at Sam Houston game.
“The situation does surprise me and that are there are only two teams in the West actually in the playoffs,” Wulff said. “I don’t know if they do it by record or how they rank that. Everybody thought we were playing a Texas school or Western Kentucky. Nobody thought that it would go this way. But it really doesn’t matter to be quite honest, we have to get ready to play a football game.”
No. 7 Montana (9-2), the Big Sky Conference champion because of its 31-28 win over Eastern, is home against No. 16 Northwestern State (8-3) on Saturday. The Grizzlies are in the same half of the bracket with Eastern but could face No. 4 Georgia Southern in the second round.
Cal Poly (9-2), ranked 18th, did not make the playoff field despite only losing to Davis and at EWU.
Southern Illinois is third in the country in scoring offense (43.64 points a game) and first in scoring defense (11.18). The Salukis are third in rushing offense (282.27 yards a game), second in total offense (506.36), eighth in rushing defense (99.0) and fifth in total defense (280.36).
“They are a very good football team, obviously,” Wulff said. “There isn’t a team among the 16 that isn’t very good. Cal Poly is an excellent football team and they aren’t even in. We’re a very good football team and we can beat anybody on any day. It’s just the way it is and we need to be ready to go play football.”
Eastern is ninth in passing offense (282.09), fifth in total offense (468.91) and sixth in scoring offense (38.09). Defensively the Eagles give up 356.45 yards (63rd) and 23.36 points (53rd).
“We respect the conference (Eastern is) from and we’ve heard nothing but good things about their program,” SIU coach Jerry Kill said in an afternoon conference call. “We know just in (checking) today and making phone calls they’re a very good team. We knew that last week when we started checking on teams. We’ve heard that offensively they have a lot of firepower.”
Only four teams are seeded, Southern Illinois, Furman, William & Mary and Georgia Southern. The other 12 teams, four automatic qualifiers and eight at-large picks, are theoretically not seeded but placed into games that would minimize travel.
Harvard is the only team in the top 16 in last week’s Sports Network poll not in the playoff field, but that is because the Ivy League does not participate in the playoffs. Unranked Lafayette, which upset No. 8 Lehigh on Saturday to win the berth from the Patriot League, made it for the first time and faces defending champion Delaware. Lehigh was picked and paired against James Madison.
The Eastern coaches began scrambling to find out more about Southern Illinois as soon as the playoff field was announced.
”(We’ll talk to) anybody we know that has played them or knows much about them,” Wulff said. “We’ll do whatever we can to get as much information as we can.
“We will try to swap three games and then basically review videotape and do our best to look at personnel and scheme. Then we’ll build a game plan and go play.”
The players met Sunday afternoon and resumed a normal week of preparation.