Looking to turn their season record to 2-2 and their conference game record to 1-0, the Vikings will host their first conference game against Elmhurst College on Sat. 3.
Last week when the Vikings played the Loras Duhawks, they were leading 21-3 in the first quarter and continued leading in the second quarter 29-24. The second half, things started to fall apart for the Vikings as they were outscored 29-3 to lose the game 52-56.
The Vikings have had two weeks since their loss against Loras to remedy both the offense and the defense which has allowed 155 points in the three games they’ve played. Much of the focus was put on the defense and preventing the high scoring games.
Head coach Steve Bell said the high scoring games have been detrimental to the Vikings.
“We don’t want high scoring games,” Bell said. “We would like for us to score high and the other team to score low. We have to do a better job of not giving up explosive plays, plays of 20 yards or more. It hasn’t been the consistent drives down the field, but the explosive play that either is a touchdown scoring play or a dramatically changed field position.”
The offense hasn’t been sitting idly while the defense has been improving. Senior and captain Sam Frasco said the offense has been working to be better.
“We are trying to pick up the tempo,” Frasco said. “We just gotta make up for some of our mistakes we made last week.”
While the Vikings are going to watch tape, they already know how good the 3-0 Elmhurst Blue Jays are.
“They’re big and physical upfront,” Bell said. “Defensively, they are very quick to the ball. They are a very fast defense. Hopefully there’s something we can do to counteract that.”
Frasco also remarked that Elmhurst had good defense and the team’s record during his years at Augie.
“They are extremely tough. They did a really good job of containing us the whole game,” Frasco said. “We haven’t done the best against them, but we are hoping to go 2-2 against them.”
The Vikings haven’t started looking too closely at the rest of the conference games after Elmhurst, instead focusing on one team at a time.
The Elmhurst game may also feature a new record, after Sam Frasco broke his own record of 469 total yards, set at home against Albion College, at the Loras game with 585 total offensive yards.
Being a record holder hasn’t been weighing too heavily on Frasco’s mind.
I’m not even going to worry about it honestly,” Frasco said. “It doesn’t really matter when you come up with a loss. Obviously we are just focused on the team and everyone needs to contribute. So I’m just doing the best I can to help put this team into a position to win games.”