Hawks handed huge loss in London

Photo by Heather Davidson
Photo by Heather Davidson

The Western Mustangs exposed the Wilfrid Laurier University Golden Hawks on Thursday night, as Laurier lost the tilt by a score of 61-20.

Two days after the Hawks managed to sneak in the Canadian Interuniversity Sport top 10 rankings with the final spot, they were dismantled by the fourth-ranked Mustangs.

The Mustangs now improve to 5-1 on the year and the Golden Hawks fall to 4-2

“This was a big challenge for us,” said head coach Michael Faulds. “I did not like our body language early on. They were running the ball all over us and offensively we couldn’t just click,” he said.

The Mustangs highly-touted quarterback Will Finch did not play due to an upper body injury, and his back up, Stevenson Bone, more than managed the starting job on Thursday night.

Bone finished with 285 passing yards, going 19-25 with three touchdowns.

Coach Michael Faulds felt as if the final score was mainly due to the mistakes and penalties that the Hawks gave up, among other things.

“[There was] a lot of mistakes that we can clean up … Western is a better football team than us right now,” he said.

Star Hawks running back Dillon Campbell looked human for the first time in London. He, along with the rest of the offence was held to 433 yards which was largely due to a strong fourth, scoring 14 points.

However it was much too little, way too late.

The defence had a tough time containing the run or the pass, giving up 435 yards at the half and 720 on the day. The Hawks forced the Mustangs to punt only three times on Thursday and allowed seven straight scoring drives in the first, second and third quarters.

However, Campbell did break the single season rushing yards record for Laurier with 1,132. The previous record was 1,078 in 1977 held by Jim Reid.

The Hawks now look forward to Saturday Oct. 18 when they take on the currently undefeated McMaster Marauders in their second to last game of the season.

Faulds had some advice for his club heading into the Thanksgiving weekend.

“They are going to go home, spend some time with their families, do some soul searching and some real thinking about, ‘Do we want to be a playoff football team?’ ” he said.

Kickoff in Hamilton is set for 1 p.m.

 

 

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