Redbird Seniors Set To Play Final Home Game Against Missouri State

SETTING THE SCENE
Date: Nov. 12, 2016
Location: Normal, Ill.
Kickoff: 12:04 p.m. CT
Stadium: Hancock Stadium
Stadium Capacity: 13,391
Series: ILS leads 19-16-1
Watch: ESPN3

ILLINOIS STATE RADIO
WJBC (AM 1230, FM 93.7), the flagship station of Illinois State athletics, will serve as the host of the Country Financial Illinois State Radio Network.  

ESPN3 LIVE BROADCAST
ESPN3 will carry the telecast on WatchESPN.com and the WatchESPN mobile app through participating Internet service providers. Mick Shaffer (play-by-play), Danan Hughes (color analyst), and Sara Dayley (sidelines) will call the action from Hancock Stadium on the MVFC Game of the Week. 

THE GAME
Coming off back-to-back wins against Top-15 nationally-ranked opponents, Illinois State (5-5, 3-4 MVFC) will look to cap off its season with a win over Missouri State (4-5, 2-4 MVFC) when the Redbirds host the Bears on Senior Day. A win would secure the seventh winning season in the last eight under the leadership of head coach Brock Spack and keep the Redbirds' NCAA FCS playoff hopes alive heading into the bye week.

PLAYER TO WATCH
Sophomore quarterback Jake Kolbe earned MVFC Offensive Player of the Week honors, after leading the Redbirds to their second-straight win over a Top 15 nationally-ranked opponent last week. The Naperville, Illinois, native threw for 265 yards and set a career-best with four touchdown passes as the Redbirds downed No. 11 Western Illinois on the road.  Kolbe has combined to throw for six touchdowns the past two weeks in wins for ISU.

THE SERIES
Illinois State and Missouri State will face off for the 37th time on Saturday, with the Redbirds owning a 19-16-1 advantage in the all-time series between the two schools.  The Redbirds have earned victories in the last two meetings with the Bears, and have won five of the last seven contests overall. ISU is 10-8 overall against MSU in home games, including a 21-7 win in the last meeting at Hancock Stadium on Oct. 25, 2014.

THE COACHES
Illinois State: Brock Spack (Purdue, 1983) is in his eighth season as the head coach at Illinois State (61-34). Spack, the 2014 MVFC Coach of the Year, has led the Redbirds to back-to-back shares of the MVFC title the past two seasons and FCS playoff appearances three times in the past four years.
Missouri State: Dave Steckel (Kutztown, 1982) is in his second season as the head coach at his Missouri State (5-15). Steckel brings 34 years of coaching experience into the 2016 season, including 14 seasons at Mizzou, in which he helped transform the Tigers' defense into one of the strongest units in the nation.

THE @REDBIRDFB PROGRAM

• 6 FCS playoff appearances (1998, 1999, 2006, 2012, 2014, 2015)
• 5-time FCS quarterfinalists (1999, 2006, 2012, 2014, 2015)
• 2-time FCS semifinalists (1999, 2014)
• The team is 39-19 at home under Spack's guidance
• ISU is 22-3 at Hancock Stadium since 2013

THIS WEEK'S OPPONENT

• Missouri State University is located in Springfield, Missouri, and has an enrollment of 24,735 students. The Bears are members of the Missouri Valley Football Conference and play their home games at Robert W. Plaster Stadium (17,500).
• The Bears are 4-5 on the season and have posted a 2-4 record in Missouri Valley Football Conference play so far in 2016. MSU began the season 2-0, but have won just two of its past seven games with victories at Indiana State and two weeks ago at home against Southern Illinois.
• Senior quarterback Brodie Lambert posted career highs for total offense (390), passing yards (339), completions (25) and rushing yards (51), while tossing four touchdown passes to lead MSU's comeback against the Salukis. Lambert, who earned MVFC Offensive Player of the Week honors for the first time in his MSU career as a result, threw for three TDs in the second half, helping the Bears rally from a 14-point deficit. 
• After the Bears battled back from a 14-point deficit in the first half last week against No. 13 South Dakota State, the Jackrabbits turned the tide for good with touchdowns on their first three possessions after the break. The Jacks piled up 21 unanswered points in the third quarter, recording three of their six rushing touchdowns, while holding the Bears offense to just 26 total yards during the period to come away with the victory.
• Dylan Cole notched his sixth consecutive double-digit tackle total, finishing with game-high 14 stops for the Bears defense. The linebacker moved into the Bears' career top five for tackles with his 14 stops, moving past both DeLaun Fowler (420) and Dennis O'Hagen (423) to the No. 4 spot on the list with 428 for his career.

THE LAST TIME THEY MET (OCT. 17, 2015)
Wide receiver Anthony Warrum exploded for seven catches, totaling then career-best 194 yards with three touchdowns, as the Redbirds dominated from start to finish in a 38-2 victory over the Bears on the road. Throughout the first half, the Redbird defense stood strong time and again, holding MSU to just seven first downs on just 105 total yards of offense, compared to ISU's 379 yards. The Illinois State defense was led by Soniel Estime and his career-high 11 total tackles, which included six solo stops from his safety position.

ONE FINAL TIME IN THE NEST
For 18 seniors, the game against Missouri State will be the last they play in front of their home crowd at Hancock Stadium. This group of dedicated seniors helped change the direction of the ISU football program forever, with back-to-back MVFC titles in 2014-15, an appearance in the 2014 NCAA FCS National Championship game and a total of 33 wins. With one final win over Missouri State, this group could also throw its name into the conversation for a third-consecutive appearance in the FCS Playoffs, something that has never been accomplished in program history.

A TON OF YARDS
In just his first full season as the starting quarterback at Illinois State, Jake Kolbe has had to battle injury, adversity and setbacks in order to become a leader for his team. Through it all, Kolbe has continued to improve and his performance in the team's win over No. 11 Western Illinois put him in rare company.  Kolbe threw for 265 yards, moving his career total to 2,249 yards to become just the seventh quarterback in school history to throw for over 2,000 yards in a season. Only 14 times has a Redbird quarterback thrown for 2,000 yards in campaign, and his  2,249 yards rank him No. 10 on the single-season passing list, just behind Kevin Glenn's 2,265 yards thrown in 1997.

TAKE IT TO THE HOUSE
For the second time this season, a Redbird defender took an interception the other way for a touchdown when La'Darius Newbold put his name on the score sheet against the Jackrabbits. Newbold snagged the Taryn Christion pass and ran 92 yards up the sideline to ice the game for the Redbirds and give them the win over the No. 7 ranked Jackrabbits.  Newbold was one of three Redbirds to intercept Christion on the day, who had just three interceptions all season prior to the game, and joined teammate Alejandro Rivera as Redbirds to score off an interception return this season.

MAKE THEM ONE DIMENSIONAL
Over the past two weeks, the Redbirds faced two of the top passing offenses in the league in No. 7 South Dakota State and No. 11 Western Illinois. The Redbirds focused on stopping the run, holding the Jacks to just 83 yards rushing and the Leathernecks to just 68 yards on the ground in a pair of wins. Despite yielding a fair share of yards to both passing attacks, ISU still ranks No. 3 in the league in passing defense (224.1 yards per game). 

CHASING HISTORY
The first two years of senior wide receiver Anthony Warrum's career saw him catch 29 passes for a combined 550 yards.  A solid start, but one that he knew was just the beginning. After an All-American and record-breaking season in 2015, Warrum has set himself up to be mentioned among the greatest receivers in school history. With at least one game remaining in his career, the Fishers, Indiana, already ranks in the top 10 in nearly every receiving category and has the chance to move up in a few more areas against Missouri State:

• Yards Per Reception - 1st (19.58)
• Receiving Touchdowns - 3rd (28) \\ Laurent Robinson - 2nd (29)
• Receiving Yards - 4th (2,663) \\ Rickey Garrett - 3rd (2,719)
• Receptions - 7th (136) \\ Lechein Neblett - 6th (143)

PUTTING POINTS ON THE BOARD EARLY
Scoring early and often has not been easy for ISU this season, however the team has made it a point of emphasis the past two weeks and the results cannot be challenged. In back-to-back wins over No. 7 South Dakota State and No. 11 Western Illinois, the Redbirds scored a pair of first-quarter touchdowns to take early leads. It marked the only two times the Redbirds had scored more than one touchdown in the opening quarter of play and ISU had now out-scored opponents 52-47 in the first quarter, a drastic change from earlier in the season when the Redbirds had scored just 10 points in the first quarter through the first six games of the season.