Marion Rumph, Dennis Mitchell and Travis Watters each had an interception as the Topper defense kept the offense off the scoreboard on 16 drives — the unit forced 10 3-and-out possessions.
“I thought our defense played very well, but our offense was very bad,” WKU head coach David Elson said. “I really like the progress that we’re seeing on defense. We were way down in the total number of tackles for loss we had last season, so we’ve tried to emphasize in camp getting people behind the chains on first down — we’re doing that right now.”
Rumph posted a team-high nine tackles, with Andre Lewis and Sam Sexton chipping in with six apiece. Fourteen individuals were credited with at least one stop behind the line of scrimmage, led by Bryson Hall’s three, while Lewis and Sexton each collected two tackles for loss as well.
The defense recorded eight sacks and also broke up five passes.
The first-team offense had its best opportunity to score midway through the mini-scrimmage after moving the ball 50 yards, as the unit had 1st-and-goal on the defense’s 10-yard line. But, after a pass interference penalty Mitchell stepped in front of a Justin Haddix pass in the end zone to end the threat.
Andrew McCloud, who gained 23 yards on three carries on that possession, led the offense with 13 attempts for 41 yards. Haddix completed 7-of-12 passes for 39 yards, with both Chris Jackson and Maurice Perkins collecting a pair of receptions.
On the first-team’s final drive of the day, Haddix found Lerron Moore for a 7-yard gain to set up a first down, but the possession ended when Lewis and Rumph combined to stop McCloud for no gain on 4th-and-1 from the defense’s 21-yard line.
“We need to take a long, hard look at the offense — there’s a lot of work we need to do on that side of the ball,” said Elson. “The offense has done some good things this fall, they have shown some promise at times. But, we didn’t get much work done today.”
WKU returns to the practice field at 4:20 p.m. (CDT) Friday before holding the team’s first full scrimmage of the fall Saturday at 9 a.m.
