The St. Thomas football team will kick off the 2014 season Saturday against a familiar non-conference opponent: the Wisconsin-Eau Claire Blugolds.

The No. 11-ranked Tommies will look for a third straight week one win over the Blugolds after soundly defeating them 52-7 in last season’s opening game and winning 2012’s close game 27-24. Eau Claire rushed for 90 yards in last season’s matchup, and coach Glenn Caruso said he expects Eau Claire to stick to its philosophy of relying heavily on the running game.

“They’re a team that runs the ball and runs the ball well,” Caruso said. “If you look at their numbers, you can see they’ve made a commitment to running the football.”

The Blugolds’s top rusher from last season, running back Joel Sweeney, has graduated, and Caruso said Sweeney’s absence from the Blugold lineup makes a different team from the one the Tommies have faced the past two years. Caruso added that the uncertainty of Eau Claire’s backfield forces the coaching staff to “become good game day coaches.”

“A lot of times when you lose a great player when the program is in a healthy state, a lot of guys step up and shoulder the load,” Caruso said. “Sometimes when you’re game-planning, it’s more difficult when you don’t know what to expect.”

Defensive back Sean Hamlin added that the St. Thomas secondary will need to be stout against the run in support of the team’s defensive line and linebackers.

“Being a solid run team means the defensive backs need to come up and make plays in the run game and make tackles in the backfield,” Hamlin said. “A big thing for us is no missed tackles, and we take that seriously.”

St. Thomas will concentrate on stopping its opponent’s rushing attack, but after leading the MIAC with 205.9 rushing yards per game last season, the Tommies will look to gain plenty of rushing yards themselves.

The Tommies ran for 280 yards in last year’s opening game, including 108 from quarterback Matt O’Connell and 45 from running back Jack Kaiser. Caruso said the team’s running game is successful when “guys are hustling and transitioning from route runners to blockers and our ball carriers have the vision to see some of the holes opened by the blocking.”

O’Connell will play his first game since suffering a season-ending leg injury midway through the season against Gustavus Adolphus last year, but Caruso said the Tommies may still look to him to make plays with his legs on Saturday.

“When the time comes when we can take advantage of running the ball with the quarterback, we capitalize on that opportunity,” Caruso said. “From a coordinator’s perspective, a quarterback’s ability to mitigate an average play into a good play makes things a little smoother when you’re trying to run your offense.”

Eau Claire failed to sack O’Connell during last year’s game, but offensive lineman Ulice Payne III pointed out that the Blugolds new defensive coordinator Sam Cummings may change the look of the defense the Tommies have faced in the past.

“There was a familiarity with their defense until they got a new defensive coordinator,” Payne said. “He will be bringing his own traits and beliefs to the team, so we get to see what he brings to the Blugolds team and what he throws at us.”

Payne added that although St. Thomas is somewhat familiar with Cummings because of his tenure as the defensive line coach at Concordia-St. Paul, his new players may change his game plan in some ways.

“We’ve only seen a little bit of film on him, and it is hard to depict because he has a whole new set of players to work with,” Payne said. “We have an idea, but it will be interesting to see what the skill from Eau Claire brings to his play-calling.”

Even with the uncertainty of Eau Claire’s personnel changes, offensive lineman David Simmet said the key to replicating the success of last season’s victory over the Blugolds begins with pre-game preparation and a willingness to trust the coaching staff.

“Success on offense begins with a good game plan,” Simmet said. “I think our coaches always do a good job of that, and everyone on the team has really embraced the system and trusts the coaching staff to prepare us.”

He may be 6-0 in his career at St. Thomas in season-opening games, but Caruso said the team has never played a perfect game in any of them, and will be the first to admit that he “does not know if he is the world’s greatest week one coach.”

“We may not always look as sharp or crisp in week one as we do in week seven, but the key is being productive and winning the football game,” Caruso said. “When you prepare the team the way we do, we want to make sure that whatever we lay down on film in week one we learn from and continue to get better.”

Tom Pitzen can be reached at pitz2014@stthomas.edu.