The Central College defense forced five Illinois Wesleyan turnovers en route to a 38-13 football victory Saturday afternoon in Bloomington, Illinois as heard live on 92.1 KRLS.

The Dutch D got started early, as Cameron Bannister picked off a pass on the Titans first possession of the game, leading to a Hunter Hoffman two-yard touchdown toss to tight end Nick Coble. A Logan Sunvold field goal early in the second quarter and a Keegan Glover fourth-down scoring strike to Ryan Neu just before half gave Central a 17-0 lead.

Illinois Wesleyan scored on the opening drive of the third quarter and then got a stop before the Dutch defense got busy. Cael Fiderlein recovered a Titan fumble leading to a Hoffman touchdown pass to Jeff Herbers, then Central’s defense got in the end zone on its own when linebacker Austin Burns ripped the ball out of an Illinois Wesleyan receiver’s grasp and raced 48 yards to the end zone.

The Titans returned the ensuing kickoff for a touchdown, but Central answered with Glover’s one yard touchdown run after a Reid Pakkebier fumble recovery, and Josh Dennison’s pick with six seconds remaining sealed it. Dutch Coach Jeff McMartin couldn’t say enough about the defensive performance.

“You just look at how well we stopped the run – we knew they were going to try to run, they’re a team that has a lot of starters back – I thought we were very effective in that area”, McMartin said. “I thought we did a good job in the passing game also and we created a lot of turnovers. That’s about as good a first half as we could hope to play on defense, then we came out in the second half and other than that first drive I thought that we were very opportunistic and did a great job of getting the ball back to the offense.”

Central’s defense limited Illinois Wesleyan to just 230 yards of total offense, including only 22 yards rushing on 22 carries.

The Dutch are off to a 2-0 start and will host Coe next Saturday in both the American Rivers Conference and home opener at Ron & Joyce Schipper Stadium.