Huskies' secondary hurting
By JOHN SAHLY
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jsahly@daily-chronicle.com
For more NIU coverage, visit HuskieWire.com
DeKALB – Northern Illinois will find out a lot about some members of its secondary this week.
With the announcement from NIU football coach Jerry Kill at his weekly news conference that senior safety David Bryant would be out 2-4 weeks with a knee injury, several players will have increased roles when the Huskies take on Akron on Saturday.
"He doesn't have to have surgery on his knee but you're probably looking at anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks from what I was told," Kill said of Bryant.
Bryant injured the knee in the first quarter of NIU's 27-22 win at Miami (Ohio) this past Saturday and now redshirt freshmen Jody Van Laanen and Tommy Davis should receive increased playing time as they did from the second quarter on against the RedHawks while Bryant recuperates.
Kill said at one point against the RedHawks, there were three safeties on the sidelines with various injuries, but Bryant will be the only one who misses a game.
"I think people thought, 'Boy, they're scrambling there on the sideline.' Yeah, we were," Kill said. "We were down to no safeties at one time. We were scrambling a little bit."
"We found a way to stay in there and that's a credit to Jody being ready to play and being smart enough to come in and know where to go and what to do."
Van Laanen recorded two assisted tackles against Miami while Davis and junior Garrett Barnas each assisted on a tackle.
"Jody did good. He hasn't had a lot of reps," Kill said. "Tommy Davis will have to step up in that area. We'll take him and he's been playing some safety and he'll be more productive back there. [Redshirt freshman] Rashaan Melvin will get more active at corner and that's how we'll go with that."
Melvin has seen action in one game, playing against Western Illinois in the second week of the season.
Davis said he wasn't too sure about what will happen for the next few weeks in the secondary, but he would be ready for whatever happens.
"A key as a young [player] is you've just always got to be ready to go because you never know when your number is going to be called so that just comes throughout the season," Davis said.
Even with the inexperienced players in the secondary for the Huskies, Kill is confident in them.
"We've certainly got guys that are capable of stepping up and doing some things. It's just inexperience again," Kill said. "They have to step up and make plays. They did during the game."
Huskie bits: As a major college program, NIU is 0-5 on Halloween, including a 0-3 mark at home. ... Kill was asked about the scheduling quirks in the Mid-American Conference and how Saturday's game is the first time NIU and Akron have met since Akron's dramatic 31-30 comeback victory over the Huskies in the 2005 MAC Championship Game. His reply: "I wasn't here either. We haven't talked a lot about it. I'm still trying to figure out the scheduling and how it works. We haven't really talked much about it."
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