On Monday, seven Adrian College football players were cited by D3football.com for Scoutware Team of the Week accolades during the completion of the fall semester. The Bulldogs led four schools that earned this recognition as Bluffton and Trine both had four while Coast Guard and Merchant Marine each had three selections.
On offense, junior running back Steven Moses (Adrian, Mich./Jacksonville [N.C.] White Oak High School) and freshman wide receiver Preston Smith (Sterling Heights, Mich./Henry Ford II HS) were honored. Moses ran for careers highs of 159 yards and three touchdowns on 29 carries in Adrian’s 28-21 loss to Bluffton on Oct. 24. He also scored on a key two-point conversion on the Bulldogs’ first possession of the third quarter to tie the game at 14. Smith burst onto the scene with two impressive outings in his three fall games for Adrian. The freshman caught nine passes for 136 yards in Adrian’s season finale on Oct. 24 at Bluffton. That performance included a 28-yard catch to get the Bulldogs to the 4-yard line, where Mosestook it in for a rushing touchdown on the next play.
Adrian had three representatives on the defensive side of the ball including junior defensive end DeAndre Jennings (Houston, Texas/Klein Forest HS), junior safety Brandon Kwiatkowski (Sterling Heights, Mich./Stevenson HS) and freshman cornerback JaJuan Stokes (Charlotte, N.C./Redford Union). Jennings registered a team-high nine tackles, seven of them solo stops, and returned a fumble 60 yards for a touchdown that got him visibility on ESPN SportsCenter Top Plays to help the Bulldogs win going away in a 41-10 victory at Manchester on Oct. 17. Kwiatkowski had a team-high 14 tackles for the Bulldogs in the 28-21 loss at Bluffton, often serving as touchdown-saving tackles. He also had a tackle for loss. Stokes filled the stat line for the Bulldogs in the Oct. 17 win at Manchester. He accounted for six total tackles, a sack, two pass breakups and a forced fumble in the 41-10 win. Stokes set the tone early, breaking up a pass on second-and-11 in the first quarter and tackling the receiver for a gain of just 2 on the following play, forcing a punt. He forced the fumble that Jennings returned for his 60-yard touchdown.
The Bulldogs led D3football’s special teams section with two of four honorees in junior kicker Cooper West (Belleville, Mich./Lincoln HS) and sophomore defensive back Mitchell Mallek (Portland, Mich./Portland HS) West got the scoring started for Adrian on Oct. 17 at Manchester with a 35-yard field goal on the Bulldogs’ first drive of the game, and added a 29-yard field goal early in the second quarter to make sure Adrian came away with points on two key early drives. Adrian went on to win by 31 points over the Manchester Spartans. In a fall where nobody returned a kick for a touchdown, Mallek picked off a Manchester pass and returned it 47 yards to the Spartan 13-yard line in the closing minutes, giving the Bulldogs a chance for the reserves to put the ball in the end zone in a 41-10 win.
“This is the 22nd season that D3football.com has selected the Team of the Week, which honors the top player nationally at each position from the previous week,” noted Pat Coleman, publisher and founder of the D3sports Networks, including D3football.com. “In this case, we considered all of the games played this fall for the award. This season may end up with an asterisk on it, but we consider this Team of the Week to be equivalent to the other 200-plus we have issued in our time and it will be denoted no differently on our site.
“We are very appreciative that (schools who decided to play this season) were able to get contests in this fall!”
All told, the Bulldogs program has produced a conference-record Adrian leads the MIAA with 45 all-time D3football.com Scoutware TOW citations.
Adrian finished its fall schedule with a 1-2 record and plans to play a Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association conference schedule in the spring.
This article is largely a repost of an Adrian College press release. For more sports, news and entertainment, follow the Midwest Sports Network on Twitter @MWSNsports or like the MWSN page on Facebook.
