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Posted on Thu, Nov 5, 2009 : 10:58 p.m.

Eastern Michigan football crushed at Northern Illinois

By AnnArbor.com Staff

DEKALB, Ill. — Tommy Davis returned the opening kickoff 86 yards for a touchdown and Chad Spann ran for a career-high 174 yards and two scores to help Northern Illinois rout winless Eastern Michigan50-6 on Thursday night.

The Huskies (6-3, 4-1 Mid-American) won their third straight games, scoring on five straight possessions to take a 37-6 halftime lead.

Northern Illinois piled up 537 yards in total offense. It last topped 50 points in a 59-38 win over Western Michigan in October 2004.

"You want to get momentum and as a coach you worry about that," said Huskies coach Jerry Kill, whose team became bowl eligible for the second straight year. "(But) I really didn't today. I saw the good focus in pregame and liked our energy before the game. The sideline was very into the game and we played with a lot of juice."

Spann had scoring runs of 65 and 79 yards in the first half, and DeMarcus Grady threw 30- and 31-yard touchdown passes to Landon Cox. Grady passed for 119 yards, ran for 104 and had a 5-yard scoring run in the third quarter.

Eastern Michigan (0-9, 0-5) twice drove inside the Northern Illinois 5 in the first quarter, but reached Huskies territory just once the rest of the way and had only 30 yards in the second half.

Dwayne Priest ran for 75 yards for the Eagles, who suffered their worst loss in a winless year and worst since a 55-0 defeat in 2005 at Michigan.

Freshman quarterback Alex Gillett was 2-of-12 passing for 49 yards and split time with Kyle McMahon, who wasn't much better going 3 of 10 for 33 yards.

"Execution hurt us a little bit," Eastern Michigan coach Ron English said. "We're playing some young receivers who dropped some balls. Our young quarterback (freshman Alex Gillett) hurries a little bit at times and he's not seeing the guys he needs to see and he's not doing the things he needs to do."

More: (EMUEagles.com story | NIUHuskies.com story)

Comments

catfishrisin

Sat, Nov 7, 2009 : 8:22 p.m.

What an upgrade over last year. Good think they fired the last coach so the team good be improved. Here's an idea, get rid of this failed program and put the money into academics and actually support the posted mission statement of the university.

Likearock

Fri, Nov 6, 2009 : 6:45 p.m.

tater, you're not making any friends in Ypsi with comments like that. Easy to hide behind a keyboard, isn't it?

Ralph

Fri, Nov 6, 2009 : 10:01 a.m.

The problem is, is that English has a decent coaching job. He makes over $200,000 per year. The other problem is, is that Eastern has never invested enough in facilities or funded the football program properly. Only recently has there been enough funds to have have spring recruiting fully funded. And by the way, have you seen South University St. or the State St. area lately. These areas have been definitely on the down slide.