Moore was named co-Offensive Player of the Week while Smith collected Defensive Player-of-the-Week honors for the second time this fall. It’s the first time a Topper has earned the league’s offensive honor since Jon Frazier was recognized following WKU’s 2002 regular-season finale.
A 5-foot-10, 210-pound resident of Columbus, Ohio, Moore tied a school record with four touchdowns and ran for a career-high 219 yards in the Hilltoppers’ 45-3 victory over WIU. The junior — who had 146 yards by halftime — scored on a 9-yard run to give WKU the lead for good just under six minutes into the contest, and he doubled the Toppers lead with an 8-yard touchdown run early in the second quarter after carrying on 10 of the 11 plays of the scoring drive. Moore picked up three first downs before scoring from 6 yards out on Western’s first possession of the second half, and he added a fourth-quarter touchdown with a 3-yard run as well.
It was the most yards rushing by a Hilltopper since Donte Pimpleton posted 245 in a 58-14 win at Illinois State on Nov. 3, 2001, while he was the first Western player to score four touchdowns in a contest since Eddie Thompson turned the trick on Oct. 29, 1992.
Moore leads the Gateway with 112 yards per game, ranking third with 8.2 points per contest and fifth with 116.8 all-purpose yards per outing. He stands 16th in the country in rushing and is now 26th in scoring.
Smith led WKU with 11 tackles — his fifth double-digit total in seven conference games — while recording a sack in the Western Illinois win. He paced a defense that allowed a season-low 178 total yards, including less than 100 both rushing and passing, to a Leatherneck offense that entered the contest averaging 30.8 points and 396.1 yards per outing — that included limiting Travis Glasford, the league’s leading rusher coming into the game, to just 56 yards on 16 carries. It’s the third straight game Smith has led the Western defense in tackles, and the fourth consecutive week that he has posted at least one stop behind the line of scrimmage.
The 6-foot-1, 210-pound senior from Louisville, Ky., is in the top five in the conference in both total tackles (fifth — 9.3 per game) and stops behind the line of scrimmage (second — 1.05 pg).
The Hilltoppers have claimed five of the league’s first 11 defensive honors, as Charles Thompson won the award twice in September and Getty Cavitt was recognized two weeks ago.
Western concludes the regular season with a 3 p.m. (CST) kickoff against Florida International in Miami Saturday.
