CHARLESTON, Ill. -- Due to a late season change to the schedule, the Eastern Illinois women's rugby squad will be playing at Purdue on Thursday evening, instead of hosting Illinois on Saturday.  Illinois cancelled the scheduled matchup, but the Boilermakers were able to add EIU to the docket, with kickoff set for 4 pm (central) in West Lafayette, Ind.

"We are certainly pleased to fill-in our schedule on such a short notice," said EIU head coach Frank Graziano.  "Purdue has a game on Saturday at Ohio State, so they are happy to use this game as a nice warm-up to that matchup, instead of just having a normal practice.  Our games with the Boilers have always been tough, especially at their place.  One concern we have is that the weather might play a factor in the game as there is a high probability of rain."

Graziano said that the squad had a nice long film session following last weekend's Homecoming win over Kansas (52-0) and the team has finally come back from the high they experienced in the big win versus Colorado, as well as the emotions of senior day last weekend.

"We need to get our rhythm back," said Graziano.  "We are trying to review some of the things we worked on in preseason camp and looking at game film we realized we need to address some issues via practice drills.  Our goal is to mainly clean-up our bad habits as all squads need a refresher from time-to-time.  But we really had very good practices this week."

Graziano says that defensive standout Stephanie Militello is still out this week, but that Stacy Buck should be able to get back into the lineup on Thursday.

Said Graziano, "Tasha Buchmiller came in for Militello last game and did very well, and Jazmine Moore had her best game of the season last week so we expect more from both of them.  We'll take the weekend off which will give everyone a chance to relax, then we'll focus very hard on the last two games in South Carolina.  So hopefully the ladies will come back mentally and physically refreshed prior to a hard nine-day process to get ready for the last push."

Obviously, the squad is thinking about a potential undefeated season as the squad sits at 7-0 overall with only three games remaining.  "In back of their mind they are keeping a 10-0 season in perspective, but it will take consistency and focus on everyone's part, we still need to keep grounded and take one game at a time."

The last undefeated season for a Panther squad was back in 2002 when EIU went 11-0, blanking all but one opponent in the process.  That was also the year that Eastern became the premiere NCAA Division I squad in the country.

Eastern will travel to South Carolina for two consecutive games, first at Clemson on Nov. 5, prior to a neutral site matchup with North Carolina on Nov. 8.

... for more info, contact Bart Rettberg, Asst. SID