By Tyler Wooten
GoSycamores.com

MACOMB, Ill. – In a game filled with incredible luck and spectacular plays, the Sycamores fell one lucky break short of an upset of No. 13 Western Illinois, falling 36-35 in a heartbreaker at Hanson Field on Saturday afternoon.

Indiana State (3-3, 1-2 MVFC) and Western (4-1, 1-1 MVFC) slugged it out in a back-and-forth duel of amazing football, but it all came down to 4th-and-1 on the Western 29-yard line with less than a minute to play.

Down 36-35 and on the outskirts of field goal range, the Sycamores lined up on fourth down for what appeared to be a QB sneak. However, as ISU head coach Mike Sanford revealed postgame, the play was designed to draw the Leatherneck defense offsides to give ISU a little more time to devise a way to score in the final seconds of the game.

It appeared to have worked, too, as WIU linebacker Brett Taylor appeared to have entered the neutral zone, forcing center Matt Byrne to snap the ball. The whistle never blew, though, and the Sycamores' luck ran out as QB Isaac Harker was dropped in the backfield for a two-yard loss to seal victory for Western.

“I think our guys played extremely hard,” Sanford said. “I think they played with a lot of character. I think they played with intensity, with will, with desire. I'm proud of them for that. I've got to give credit to Western Illinois, they won the game. They found a way to win the game.”

At first, the game looked nothing like its exciting finish. Both teams traded three-and-outs until RB Dimitri Taylor opened up a Pandora's Box of explosive plays for both teams with a long 63-yard run late in the first quarter to set up his own one-yard TD run at the 3:13 mark.

Western responded early in the second quarter on an 11-yard TD scramble by WIU QB Sean McGuire, and then the fun began with two scores coming in the next 29 seconds of gametime.

On the ensuing drive, senior WR Robert Tonyan Jr. became Indiana State's all-time career leader in receiving touchdowns in truly entertaining fashion. On an errant pass from Harker intended for WR Clayton Smith that bounced off two different people, Tonyan was in the right place at the right time to snag the ball out of midair behind the secondary and run 65 yards to the house for the longest TD of his career.

With that career-long reception, Tonyan broke Joe Downing's all-time record of 15 touchdowns set in 1985.

Just 16 seconds later, though, Western responded in kind with a massive 68-yard touchdown strike from McGuire (25-of-43, 363 yards, 3 TD, 2 INT) to Lance Lenoir, who had a monster day against the Sycamore defense with 204 yards and two touchdowns on 11 receptions. The last opposing receiver to break the 200-yard plateau against the Sycamore defense was future NFL Draft pick Laurent Robinson of Illinois State, who hauled in 14 catches for 292 yards and three touchdowns against the Sycamores on Nov. 12, 2005.

That score began a 20-0 run by the Leathernecks, but the Sycamores quickly turned that around with an exhilarating 21-0 run of their own in the third quarter that featured a 10-yard TD run by Jaquan Keys, a 30-yard interception return for a TD by LB Jameer Thurman and a blocked punt by John McDonald-Horner that setup a 10-yard TD run by Roland Genesy.

However, that final score by Genesy at the 3:51 mark in the third would be it for the Sycamore offense, as Western closed out on a 9-0 run in the fourth quarter and came up with the big fourth-down stop with 30 seconds to play.

The Sycamores now enter a crucial stretch of the Missouri Valley Football Conference slate at 3-3 overall and 1-2 in conference play with South Dakota coming into Terre Haute next week.

“This is a defining moment for our team in how we deal with this and how we move forward from this,” Sanford said. “We have a very important home game against South Dakota this week. You have to be able to respond to adversity in a positive way, and that, to me, is why (this game) is a defining moment.”

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