The Brown and Gold Brigade took care of Wooster without any problems on Thursday night by winning 48-10 over the Fighting Scots in a football scrimmage. The game was dominated by many big plays for the Yellow Jackets, as they took command early on to win.
“We build on what we had, confidence-wise, what we did offensively, defensively and special teams, and I think we’ll be able to correct our mistakes,” football head coach Jim Hilvert said after the game.
While it was only a scrimmage and it was against a non-conference foe, BW is trying to convert this winning energy to Saturday when they play for real against Mount St. Joseph.
“I think we can take a huge jump from our scrimmage to our first game as we play against a great opponent. Mount St. Joe’s has good football players, and is one of the top 30 teams in the country,” Hilvert said. “We gotta be ready, I know our guys are excited about what happened last year and playing a tough team right off the bat.”
In six seasons, after being a coaching assistant at MSJ prior to joining BW in 2017, Hilvert has led the Yellow Jackets to a 36-16 record, with his only losing season coming in the 2020-2021 campaign that was shortened due to COVID-19.
Of course, this year the Yellow Jackets will have to face off against two top 25 schools in the preseason poll this year at John Carroll and Mount Union.
Those two schools have had BW’s number over the last few years, as they haven’t beaten JCU since 2012 and haven’t beaten MU since 1994. BW has come close to JCU during Hilvert’s time here, as they lost games to the Streaks by scores of 24-21, 45-35, 17-10, 28-17, 29-28, and 21-7.
Hilvert said the team can end the losing stream “by getting better every day and every week. For us, when it comes to games like that, we gotta come out and take it.” He reminded the team that “we have two good opponents in front of that, in Mount St. Joe’s and Wilmington, and we’ll worry about them first.”