After the football team’s first game, the Vikings find themselves 0-1. They lost 58-25 to Mount St. Joseph and allowed the most points in Coach Rob Cushman’s history at Augustana.
Junior quarterback Sam Frasco went 7-19 with 118 passing yards with one interception, and recognizes the negative aspects of the game.
“The result really isn’t what we wanted at all,” said Frasco, “I just have a feeling we are going to react in a positive way; so, we just need to learn from the negatives that occurred.”
Frasco and the team plan on learning from these mistakes while moving forward and plan to keep all of their season goals the same.
“Our season goals will absolutely not change. Our goal is to still win the CCIW,” said Frasco, “All our team goals are still intact. Obviously, this game was kind of a setback, but we will not let it hold us back from anything in the rest of the season.”
In the first week, 7 of the 8 teams in the CCIW played and three won their first game while four lost. The only team ranked above Augustana in the preseason polls that won their first game so far is Illinois Wesleyan, who was ranked third compared to Augustana being ranked fourth.
Sophomore running back Brandon Price had about two yards-per-carry excluding his longest run of the night and believes that execution was a factor in the loss.
“We need to execute plays better, it was not where it needed to be, and that was evident,” said Price.
However, Price is more frustrated about not getting a win against Mount St. Joseph than he is about not rushing for so few yards.
“I don’t really care about my averages, how many yards I get, or how many touchdowns I score, I just want to win,” said Price, “I don’t care about individual accomplishments, just winning and succeeding as a team.”
Augustana was outscored every quarter of the game, and while they only gained 67 less total offensive yards, they gave up two turnovers compared to Mount St. Joseph’s zero. Augustana also completed 8-25 of their passes while Mount St. Joseph went 20-25 in the air.
Freshman Keith King Jr. was fifth on the team in solo tackles with 4, and he also had one tackle for a loss. He was among the many underclassman that received playing time, and Frasco believes that letting these guys play their first game while losing is a big learning experience for them.
“For the younger guys, game one was a way to get their jitters out and then make better reads in the future,” said Frasco. “We will go game by game and see what the defense gives us. As a team, we had a decent amount of young guys get some time; so, hopefully those game one jitters are out.”
Augustana’s next football game will be away against Hope College on September 13th at 1:30 p.m. Hope lost their first game at Monmouth, 20-30.