CHAMPAIGN - Hi, I’m Kevin Murphy, the managing editor at The Daily Eastern News, and I’ll be blogging Eastern’s football game against Illinois at 11 a.m. in the Memorial Stadium.

The Eastern football team is playing its second Football Bowl Subdivision team for the second week in a row, the Fighting Illini.The Illini are opening the season in their newly-renovated Memorial Stadium. And the finishing touches are still being put on. The elevator up to the press box wasn’t finished, but for the most part, the renovation looks really nice.

Eastern lost last week to Central Michigan, 31-12, where for the most part, the defense played a solid game. No. 24 Illinois lost a shootout to No. 6 Missouri in St. Louis, 52-42, where there was no defense by both teams.

That’s been the question all week by both various media outlets. Whose defense will step up?

Mostly like Illinois. But stranger things have happened, aka, Appalachian State vs. Michigan in 2007.

Checked the Daily Illini Web site, the student newspaper, no love for Jeff Sobol. There was a story about Eastern red-shirt freshman right tackle D’Angelo McCray, an Illinois transfer and it mentioned Eastern’s Cory Leman who is the younger brother of Illini All-American J Leman. But no mention about Sobol, who last played at Illinois in 2005.

But the Illinois sports information did make a note of it in its pregame notes.

Oh, and in today’s game program, the mugs of all the Eastern players are Western Illinois players. Yes, all of the players’ mugs are of Western Illinois last season. It’s fairly obvious. The names, positions and heights are all correct, but the photos are from when Illinois played the Leathernecks last season.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 6th, 2008 at 11:19 am and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.