Saturday papers & gameday results

Sorry, loyal readers, for not getting a morning news post up. I was on the road without Internet access, on an unforseen trip. I'm now back at OVC Football Blog Headquarters, checking in on the day's results. Here's what happened, followed by links to the (now stale) stories from the morning papers.

Eastern Kentucky 31, Samford 12 - The Colonels get back on track, winning their second game of the season and their first conference victory after a surprising 0-2 start in the OVC. EKU quarterback Josh Greco managed 323 yards passing, 18-28 with two long touchdowns and -here's a key stat - no interceptions. Samford played three different quarterbacks in the game, who went a combined 13-29 for 146 yards.

Eastern Illinois 21, Southeast Missouri 0 - The defending champion Panthers shut out a Southeast Missouri State team that had been second in the league in scoring at 27 points per game. The Redhawks hadn't turned the ball over at all this season, but EIU forced a fumble and picked off two passes. SEMO was hald to just 101 yards of total offense.

EIU now shares the league lead, at two wins, with UT-Martin. Both of those teams have a chance to rise in the polls on Monday, following important OVC victories. UT-Martin has the week off before visiting Samford Oct. 21. EIU visits Eastern Kentucky, visits Murray State, and then the Panthers and Skyhawks meet Oct. 28 in Martin. depending on what happens between now and then, that could turn out to be the game in the OVC this season.

And now, this morning's news:

First, something that makes football seem inconsequential at best. UT-Martin radio announcer Tom Britt was in the hospital during UT-Martin's game at Tennessee Tech Thursday night. He'd been involved in a hit-and-run accident early that morning. He was in stable condition Friday, according to the Jackson (Tenn.) Sun, but his wife Martha was killed in the wreck. My prayers go out to Tom Britt and his family in this difficult time. And here's hoping the authorities track down the coward who hit them and then sped away.

The (Charleston, Ill.) Journal Gazette/Times-Courier says EIU's Zach Yates planned to pit his rugby-style punts against the league-leading, skyscraping longbombs of SEMO's David Simonhoff. He hadn't set a goal of outdoing Simonhoff, the paper says (he wound up with an average of 30.7 on three punts to Simonhoff's 38.7 on seven punts). Another story reports on Vincent Webb's rise from unheralded walk-on to the man with the third-best rushing total in I-AA so far this year.

The Richmond (Ky.) Register says EKU hoped to use its opponent today as it has for the last three years: as a springboard to improved performance. Each of the last three seasons, the paper says, the Colonels have used victories against Samford to turn around dissappointing starts (and whaddya know, another year, another EKU win, as it turns out).

The Birmingham (Ala.) News says Samford was was hoping to play two good halves of ball after posting strong second halves in two losses over the last two weeks. (As it turned out, the Bulldogs had just another good half - if you add the first quarter to the fourth.)

The Southeast Missourian says SEMO was hoping to turn in a much better performance against EIU than it did against another conference heavyweight, JSU, back in the third week of the season. (That didn't turn out well, it seems.)