Football Battles Back, Falls Short at Murray State

Saturday, September 14

Murray, Ky.

6:00 PM

Southern Illinois University

1-2

Murray St.

1-1

Team	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	Final F
Southern Illinois	6	0	11	7	24
Murray State	14	14	0	14	42

09/14/2002 | 12:00:00 | Football

Box Score

Sept. 14, 2002

Box Score?|? Photo Gallery

MURRAY, Ky., - Southern Illinois battled back from a three-touchdown deficit but could not turn the corner at Murray State, dropping a 45-24 decision to the Racers.

The Salukis (1-2) lost more than just a football game as the school's all-time leading rusher, Tom Koutsos, broke his right wrist on his first carry of the game.

His substitute, Mo Abdulqaadir, took the very next handoff 63 yards to the Murray State five, setting himself up for a five-yard TD run on the next play. The extra point attempt by Scott Everhart was no good as SIU took an early 6-0 advantage.

The rest of the half was forgettable for the Salukis who fumbled the ball three times and had one field goal attempt blocked. The Racers (1-1) took advantage of the miscues, scoring a pair of touchdowns in each quarter to build a 28-6 halftime advantage. Two of the scores came on touchdown passes from Deandre Green to Stewart Childress.

Southern regained its composure in the second half, putting together a nice 8-play, 51-yard scoring drive, capped off by a five-yard touchdown pass from Joel Sambursky to Chris Kupec. Following the two-point conversion, SIU trailed 28-14.

Later in the third quarter, Scott Everhart connected on a career-long 47-yard field goal to narrow the gap to 28-17.

SIU regained possession with 12 minutes left in the game, trailing by 11, but could not generate a first down and had to punt.

The Racers then put the game away, marching 76 yards for a score, capped by a one-yard touchdown run by Billy Blanchard with 9:05 left in the contest.

Abdulqaadir added a 13-yard touchdown run with 5:55 left and finished as the game's leading rusher with 168 yards on 27 carries in his first extensive action as a Saluki.

The game was marred by frequent unsportmanlike conduct penalties and personal fouls against Murray State. MSU was penalized 19 times for 161 yards.

"The bottom line is that our kids held their composure and played their guts out," Saluki head coach Jerry Kill said. " I saw some things on offense that were very promising."

Postgame Quotes: RYAN MCCALISTER: This was a sloppy game. We started out well with the quick touchdown and then missed the extra point. We drove up and down the field but we had too many turnovers and dug a hole for ourselves.

We always have games like this against Murray State. It's always a track meet every year. I didn't think there would be this many penalties and the game got out of hand at times. This is the worst one in my five years at SIU by far.

Every time we made a play we would shoot ourselves in the foot later. We have to stop doing that if we want to win. We're making it hard on the defense with turnovers and leaving them on the field way too much.

ALEXIS MORELAND: Coach Kill told us in the lockerroom that the team that makes the fewest mistakes wins and we made a lot of mental mistakes tonight and missed too many tackles. That caused us to lose the game, it wasn't that they outplayed us, we made too many mistakes ourselves.

I never thought the game would be that wild but we kept our composure and tried to play through the penalties. We played the best we could but the mistakes killed us in the end. We have to tke this as a lesson and learn from it.