Saturday marks the beginning of the 120th season for the Fighting Illini Football Team. The season opener is against the Missouri Tigers as part of the State Farm Arch Rivalry game in the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, MO. Mizzou leads the all-time series, 15-7, and has won all four games in the State Farm Arch Rivalry series played in St. Louis. Missouri beat Illinois last year 52-42.
This year is expected to be different, however. Missouri has lost a lot of their big name starters from last year, including quarterback Chase Daniel, tight end Chase Coffman, and wide receiver Jeremy Maclin. Illinois has been preparing for this game for quite some time, and it seems to have paid off. The Fighting Illini are a 6.5-point favorite going into this week’s game.
Some controversy has recently been brewing between these two teams when Missouri senior linebacker Sean Weatherspoon called out Juice Williams in a personal Tweet: “just finished a stellar workout, hit 475 on the bench easy, almost hit 500, gotta get it soon! 50 days until I squeeze the pulp out of Juice.” Weatherspoon received a lecture from Coach Gary Pinkel following this post. Williams is expected to answer with his own message on Saturday.
The game plan for Saturday according to Coach Ron Zook:
Well I think number one, we can’t turn the ball over, which is something we always say but it really became our Achilles heel last year. We can’t turn the ball over and we can’t give up big plays. We have to stop the run. I think the one thing we didn’t do last year was stop the run. It really felt like that was a reason that we weren’t able to make it a better game. Our defense has been made aware of that all summer and obviously in camp. But we’ve got to stop the run. We can’t let that running back get going. Washington is a good player, a guy that can beat you. We have to take care of business and take care of the ball on offense.
Watch our for quarterback Juice Williams who will be playing his final season with Illinois along with running back Daniel Dufrene and junior receiver Arrelious Benn.
Illinois vs. Missouri
Saturday, September 5, 2009
2:40pm | ESPNLive Coverage vs. Missouri
Live Audio | GameTracker | TV: ESPN | RADIO
Good luck to the 2009 Fighting Illini Football Team!
Wear orange, and Go Illini!
Ron Zook Press Conference Transcript
Game 1: Illinois (0-0) vs. Missouri (0-0) at St. Louis
State Farm Arch Rivalry
Tags: Arch Rivalry, arrelious benn, college football, Edward Jones Dome, Football, illinois sports, Juice Williams, Missouri, Ron Zook, sean weatherspoon, St. Louis, Twitter
