2 earn MVFC 1st-team honors

YSU FOOTBALL

Donald Jones and Mychal Savage were cited by the conference.

ST. LOUIS, Mo. — Youngstown State senior wide receiver Donald Jones and senior defensive tackle Mychal Savage earned first-team All-Missouri Valley Football Conference honors, the league announced on Wednesday.

Junior guard Eric Rodemoyer and senior cornerback Lenny Wicks earned second-team accolades while senior quarterback Brandon Summers, junior free safety Andre Elliott and junior wide receiver Dominique Barnes were honorable-mention selections.

Savage is a three-time first-team all-conference selection after earning honors in 2006, 2007 and 2009.

He is the second defensive player in school history to be named first-team all-league three times joining — James Terry (2005-07) and Dwyte Smiley (1997-99).

Jones caught a school-record 77 passes en route to being just the second wide receiver in school history (Ferlando Williams in 2007) named to the MVFC’s first-team all-conference squad.

Jones finished with 790 yards and six touchdowns during his senior campaign.

YSU had an offensive linemen named all-conference for the fifth consecutive year with Rodemoyer making the second team.

Wicks is the first YSU corner since 2006 (Jason Perry and Codera Jackson) to earn all-league accolades.

Summers ended his career as a two-time honorable-mention all-league selection. This year, he set the school record for single-season completions.

Barnes and Elliott had outstanding junior seasons and will get a crack at first- or second-team honors their senior campaigns.

Barnes has a reception in 23 consecutive games — seven shy of the school mark — while Elliott has 152 career tackles in his two seasons with the program.

YSU has had at least seven players earn all-conference honors in five of the past six years.

The league’s leading all-purpose yardage man — RB Deji Karim of Southern Illinois — has been named Missouri Valley Football Offensive Player of the Year in a vote of league coaches, media and sports information directors.

For just the second time in league history (1985-Mark Farley, UNI; James Houston-MSU) there are co-Defensive Players of the Year as DE James Ruffin of UNI and DE Danny Batten of South Dakota State share the league’s top defensive honor.

Salukis head coach Dale Lennon joins six other previous league coaches to win the Bruce Craddock Coach of the Year award in back-to-back seasons.

Karim, a Walter Payton Award candidate, leads the FCS with 1,512 rushing yards and ranks No. 3 nationally with 188 all-purpose yards per game.

Karim has had eight 100-yard rushing games this year and is the only Division I player in the last seven seasons to have two 90-plus yard rushes in the same season.

Ruffin is the sixth league player to win back-to-back Defensive Player of the Year honors. He leads the league and ranks sixth nationally with 10.5 sacks.

Ruffin recently accepted an invitation to play in the East-West Shrine Game. He registered 48 tackles, including 17 solo stops, this year and has recorded at least one sack in eight games.

Batten, meanwhile, leads the Jackrabbits with nine sacks and 17 tackles for loss. His 82 tackles is the best of any defensive lineman in the conference.

He notched a career-high 12 tackles against Minnesota on Nov. 14 and had a career-high three sacks in the regular-season finale at Western Illinois. Ruffin and Batten are Buck Buchanan Award candidates.

A finalist for the Eddie Robinson Award, Lennon is this year’s MVFC’s top coach. The Salukis, winners of 10-straight games and a league-record 14-straight MVFC games, are ranked No. 1 in the FCS and have made the playoffs for the seventh-straight season.