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Allegheny to Rekindle Rivalry with Carnegie Mellon
September 20, 2007
Football Game Notes (PDF)
MEADVILLE, Pa. - Allegheny College’s football team (1-1) will look to win their second game in a row on Saturday, traveling to Carnegie Mellon (2-1) for the first time since the 1995 season. The Gators will try to build on a 20-7 victory in Hiram last weekend but have a tough task at hand, facing a team that advanced to the NCAA Division III Playoffs after running the regular season gauntlet unbeaten last season.
A quick start on offense and a consistent effort on the defensive side of the ball were key for the Gators last week. Allegheny scored 17 points in the first quarter and allowed only a single Hiram score late in the fourth quarter to earn the win.
“I think we got a lot of work done in the first half,” said Gator head coach Mark Matlak. “Our running backs are guys that can make people miss and have really good vision, and we did a good job of creating space for them. Unfortunately, we didn’t carry it over to the second half. Defensively, we were able to keep the ball in front of us – handling all of the tough spots in the game, except for the last two drives.”
The Blue and Gold were led offensively by Devin Raynor (Bemus Point, N.Y./Maple Grove) and Rodney Still (Hummelstown, Pa./Dauphin), who each totaled 81 yards on the ground, with the former adding a touchdown. Defensively, linebacker Mateo Villa (Windsor, Ohio/Middlefield Cardinal) led the charge with a game-high 14 tackles.
This week, the Gators will once again look to its duo of running backs to lead the offensive effort with first-year starting quarterback T.J. Salopek (North Huntington, Pa./Norwin), who has completed 18-of-31 pass attempts for 210 yards and a touchdown so far this season. His receiving corps is led by Jim Lieb (Carrolltown, Pa./North Cambria), who leads the team with nine catches and opened last week’s contest with a 60-yard kickoff return. James Jones (Ellington, N.Y./Falconer Central) and Jake Vite (Hollidaysburgh, Pa./Hollidaysburg Area) will also look to get involved this weekend. On the year, Jones has a 36-yard touchdown catch while Vite has averaged 20.2 yards per reception.
Offensive line play will be vital in creating opportunities for the Gator skill players. “We’re still a work in progress on the offensive line,” said Matlak. “We made some improvements last week, but we’re still missing a lot of blocks and not finishing a lot of blocks. We still have a lot of work to do in that area.”
Defensively, Villa (23 tackles) will be joined by Jon Buggey (Homer City, Pa./Homer Center), who has team-highs with 4.5 tackles for loss and two sacks from the secondary. Curt Anderson (Batavia, N.Y./Batavia Notre Dame) and Ross Simcoe are also among the Gator defensive leaders, totaling 16 and 14 tackles respectively this year with Anderson picking up his first collegiate interception last week.
“We have a lot of veteran guys that know our system on defense,” noted Matlak. “We’ve also injected some young guys up front, making us a bit bigger than we were a year ago. You have to give the kids credit - defense needs to be our strength the way we are playing on offense.”
The head coach points to several key factors for this week’s game at Carnegie Mellon. “They are a defense that keeps the action in front of them and doesn’t get beat deep very often. We will need to stay within our philosophy of 50/50 offense and make some first downs so we can keep our defense off the field against their style of play on offense. Defensively, we have keep things in front of us and stop them from making big plays. This is probably the most physical team we will play since I have been here. It will be interesting to see how our guys hold up against it.”
The Tartans will be looking to rebound from a 27-26 defeat at the hands of Hobart, a loss that knocked once 22nd ranked Carnegie Mellon out of the d3football.com Top-25 poll. Prior to that contest, the Tartans had defeated Rochester 33-10 and Grove City 16-6.
The ground game has been a key for the Tartans this year, with running backs Robert Gimson (56 car/393 yds/2 TDs) and Travis Sivek (68 car/288 yds/6 TDs) leading the way for the old fashioned “Wing-T” offense. On defense, Carnegie Mellon is paced by safety Jon Scholl (34 tackles), inside linebacker Jim Sands (28 tackles), and safeties Cody Vild (2 INT) and Josh Kresge (2 INT).
The Gators and Tartans will look to rekindle a heated rivalry consisting of 45 meetings all-time, but the first since the 1995 season. In that contest, Allegheny earned a 34-7 victory in Pittsburgh, giving the Gators a five-game win streak in the series. The rivalry dates all the way back to the 1906 season when Carnegie Mellon, then known as Carnegie Tech, defeated Allegheny 5-0. Overall, the Tartans hold a 27-16-2 lead in the series.
Kickoff for the game is set for 7:00 p.m. at Gesling Stadium in Pittsburgh, Pa.