Auburn, AL (EETV) — It has been a long time coming, but Auburn has found consistency in their offensive line. For the first time since 1983, Auburn had three ball carriers rush for over 100 yards a piece.
In Auburn’s 55-16 win over the Golden Flashes, Jatarvious Whitlow bulldozed his way for 135 rushing yards on only 17 carries. One tackler was not enough to drag him down tonight.
Shaun Shivers got in on the attacking forefront with 102 rushing yards of his own, hitting the double digit mark in carries for the first time this season.
Shiver’s speed was a nice complement to Whitlow’s power Saturday night, and when back-up quarterback Joey Gatewood has a blend of both, Auburn is hard to stop.
Kent State was giving the Tigers some trouble after they took 6 minutes off the clock on the first drive of the game, scoring a field goal to silent the crowd.
The first half for Kent State saw them score 10 points and a touchdown to cut the score down to 4 with 10 minutes left in the second quarter.
The second half held a different fortune for Kent state, only scoring two field goals while the Auburn offense kept on rolling.
Eight different players had a rushing attempt tonight, which was uncharacteristic for an Auburn team that heavily relied on Whitlow as the primary ball carrier for the first two games of the season.
With such a lopsided score, head coach Gus Malzahn only had one choice; to play the back-ups and give the starters some rest for a monstrous SEC battle vs Texas A&M in College Station next Saturday.
Playing a lot of back-ups was, "really good for developing depth" Malzahn said. "It was really good for our morale, and for some of those young guys to get out there and show what they can do."
The play of the game occurred in the third quarter, with a perfectly executed flea-flicker from Bo Nix to Eli Stove to put the game out of reach at 38-10. There was not much needed from the Pinson Valley native tonight as he only threw the ball 16 times, completing 12 of them.
Efficiency was missing from Bo the first two weeks, completing 47 percent of his passes coming into tonights game.
All sides of the ball were working like a fine tuned oiled machine and Auburn will have plenty to be happy about while going into their first SEC matchup of the season.
