Sports

No. 17 CalU Overpowers Clarion Football 40-13

The Golden Eagle football team dropped its first PSAC-West Division game this past weekend to the California University Vulcans by the score of 40-13.

CalU came into the game being ranked No. 17 in Division II football.

Early in the second quarter, with no points on the board the Golden Eagles drove to the CalU 33-yard line behind sophomore quarterback Ben Fiscus.

However, the drive came to a halt and on fourth down. Fiscus kicked a pooch punt pinning CalU at its own 6-yard line.

The Eagles were not able to take advantage of the bad field position for CalU.

The Vulcans marched 94 yards down field and scored on a 16-yard pass from quarterback Peter Lalich to Chedrick Cherry giving the Vulcans a 7-0 lead with 5:32
left in the half.

Lalich finished the drive 6-6 passing for 70 yards.

A Golden Eagle fumble on the following drive led to a scoop and score for the Vulcans jumping to a 14-0 lead with 4:23 left in the first half.

Another touchdown pass from Lalich, this time 56 yards to Thomas Mayo, gave the Vulcans a 20-0 lead going into halftime.

In the third, Clarion pulled off a fake punt on fourth and six in which back up quarterback Eric Coxon ran for 20 yards and put the Eagles in scoring position
on the CalU 46-yard line.

During the same drive, Fiscus hit sophomore Jon Reid for a 23-yard completion on third and 20.

The drive was capped off on a Jon Fuhrer three yard run for the Eagles first score.

After CalU scored on another long pass play, Clarion scored its final points of the game on a Fiscus rushing touchdown that ended an 88-yard drive.

Fiscus ended the game 10 of 21 passing for 122 yards, and 67 yards rushing with a touchdown.

Sophomore Brandon Akins led the Eagles rushing attack with 19 carries for a total of 48 yards.

Fuhrer was not far behind with a total of 37 yards rushing on 10 carries and one touchdown.

On the other side of the ball the Golden Eagles surrendered 526 yards of total offense to the Vulcans including 350 of those yards coming from the air.

Coach Jay Foster was not worried about the numbers put up against his defense.

“The stats make it look bigger than it really was. We have made drastic improvements on defense the past three weeks and we are going to continue to improve.”

Chris Wilson led the Eagles defense with eight tackles. Also, all region defensive end

Barrington Morrison ended the game with one sack and four tackles.

“We just have that quick window in the middle of the game that we do something stupid and we have a hard time stopping the bleeding after that,” stated Foster.

The Eagles, (0-4, 0-1 in PSAC), are looking to get their first win of the season this Saturday, Oct. 1, against rival Slippery Rock University.

“It’s one of those games that we go into feeling that anything can happen and we can win this,” Coach Foster said. Last time the Eagles traveled to Slippery
Rock they came out with a 27-10 victory.

Kickoff is set for 6 p.m.