When something isn’t going right, there is a propensity to want to change.
At halftime against the Laurier Golden Hawks on Saturday afternoon at the newly named Western Alumni Stadium, the Western Mustangs found themselves down 7-0.
Their run game that is usually a two-headed monster behind five road graders of an offensive line was not gaining the kind of ground they needed. Western had just 37 yards rushing.
The passing game wasn’t quite clicking.
The Mustangs changed quarterbacks, going from Jackson White to Evan Hillock, made some slight adjustments to their play calling and completely reversed the field.
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Western scored 36 second-half points on their way to a 36-16 victory over Laurier to improve to 2-1 in 2021 heading into their bye week.
Mustang head coach Greg Marshall admitted that the key was not changing too much.
“When you make big changes, it somethings backfires,” said Marshall. “What we do well, we have to continue to do well … we are a downhill running football team and we’re going to go as far as that takes us.”
It took the Mustangs into the end zone three times in the second half as Keon Edwards scored twice, including a 51-yard beauty. Trey Humes put an exclamation mark on the game by running in from 20 yards out with 32 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.
“We’re able to stay fresh,” pointed out Humes. “I was here when Alex Taylor and Cedric Joseph were the duo. When you bust a long run, you have someone ready to go to do it again. You are able to share the load. Not many teams have that.”
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Hillock threw his first OUA touchdown pass to Justin Nickson with 2:52 to go in the third quarter to get Western within three points and kickstart some momentum Western’s way.
Marshall said after the game to not read too much into the quarterbacking change.
“Evan did a good job when he came in but our offence did a better job too. We’ll evaluate (our quarterback situation) this week.”
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The Mustangs also managed to overcome some uncharacteristic turnovers in tough places.
“We tried to give it back to them a couple of times,” said Marshall. “We turned it over on the one-yard line. We turned it over again in the red zone. Those are just flat-out mistakes that you can’t make against great teams.”
Western will be off until Saturday, October 16, at 1 p.m. when they host the Windsor Lancers.
Their home field was renamed Western Alumni Stadium after a $1.4 million dollar donation from the Alumni Association. $1 million of that money has been allocated to the upkeep of the recently renovated facility.