The Eastern Michigan Eagles (6-5, 3-4) football team plays their final game of the regular season versus the Kent State Golden Flashes (5-6, 4-3) on Friday, Nov. 29 at Rynearson Stadium.
It is Senior Day for the Eagles as they look to win 7+ games for the second year in a row. The game will kick off at noon on ESPN+.
“It’s the seniors’ last home game,” EMU head coach Chris Creighton said. “It’s the last regular season game. We’ve played better these last couple weeks, and we’re playing a good opponent who has a lot to play for.
If you follow the MAC at all, especially this year, winning is really hard. If we can do that, it’ll mean that we accomplished something that is really hard.”
The Eagles have been playing much better lately as they have won two consecutive games for the second time this year. Eastern Michigan defeated Akron and Northern Illinois the past two weeks and will try to secure its first three-game winning streak of the season. The Eagles come into the game versus Kent State as 5.0-point favorites.
“We have a huge task in front of us,” Creighton said.
The Eagles haven’t played since Tuesday, Nov. 19, so they will have had 10 days off, while the Golden Flashes last played on Saturday, Nov. 23. Kent State defeated Ball State 41-38 in that game. Those extra days off could come into play as EMU senior quarterback seems to be getting healthier, after dealing with injuries in October.
Glass had 235 passing yards versus Northern Illinois.
“Our minds are right,” Creighton said. “We’re not too high or too low. We know who we are right now. We know what we’re going after. School is going on, and finals are coming up quickly.
We want our guys doing well and having a couple extra days, obviously that helps. We’re relatively healthy, but it never hurts to get some rest and treat the bumps and bruises.”
Eastern Michigan will look to have a big game from seniors Glass, Arthur Jackson III and Shaq Vann on offense. Jackson has a team-high 550 receiving yards and six touchdowns on 35 receptions, while Vann leads the team with 594 rushing yards, despite missing multiple weeks because of injury. He also had seven touchdowns on the season.
The senior class includes Thad Abram, Hunter Andrews, Kobie Beltram, Kymani Brown, Vince Calhoun, Eddie Daugherty IV, Sam Dervil, Tre’Shown Fields, Glass, Brody Hoying, Jackson, Desmond Kelly, Bryce Kemp, Line Latu, Kevin McGill, Steven Nielsen, Yannik Rohrschneider, Mathew Sexton, Shawn Simeon, Drake Sutton, Breck Turner and Vann.
“We have to keep taking the ball away and stopping the run,” Calhoun said. “That’s our main things. That’s all we have to get done. We honestly haven’t done anything differently. We’ve just been money lately.
We’re trying to take the ball away, that’s our main goal, and we focus on that in practice a lot. We want to keep doing the same thing.”
The senior class is looking for their 26th career victory.
“With a win, that’s going to buy this football family more time together,” Creighton said. “You talk about the bowl game and all that, but one of the things is just our football family in 2019, getting to stay together. That may not seem like a motivator from the outside, but I guarantee it’s a motivator for all of us.”
