Golden Bears ready to roar, even post Ilnicki
The University of Alberta Golden Bears football team is set to begin the post-Ed Ilnicki era Friday in Saskatoon against the University of Saskatchewan Huskies.
Ilnicki is arguably the best player ever to wear a Golden Bears football uniform.
The Spruce Grove product graduated after setting the Canada West single-season rushing record last year with 1,468 yards, leading Alberta to their first playoff berth in eight years. He won the Hec Crighton Trophy as the best university football player in the country, was named Canada West male athlete of the year and was a finalist for U Sports male athlete of the year.
“Ed Ilnicki was a tremendous football player for us, but he wasn’t alone, he had a lot of other guys to help support him and do other things,” said Golden Bears head coach Chris Morris. “Our approach on offence is to have everybody pitch in and have everybody be a part of the offensive production.”
Stepping in for Ilnicki this season will be running backs Dryden Kalesnikoff, Alex Gayle and Epharh Oyama. The trio is not expected to provide the production Ilnicki did in his final season, but does give the Golden Bears options out of the backfield.
“Dryden Kalesnikoff will be our tailback to start, but we expect other parts of the offence to pitch in as well,” Morris said. “We expect some of the other kids to come off the bench — kids like Alex Gayle and Epharh Oyama — to come out and carry the ball a little bit as well. It’s not going to be running back by committee, I believe your main guy has to get his carries and get a feel for things, but at the same time we feel we have lots of offensive weapons.”
The Bears running game last season benefited from the play of its outstanding offensive line, which featured all-Canadians Mark Korte and Justin Lawrence. The pair, however, has moved on to the CFL.
“We felt we had one of the best offensive lines in the country last year,” Morris said. “We feel we’ll be comparable this year. We have the two guys that are stepping in for Mark and Justin, (they) are very, very good players, top, top recruits. Peter Kozushka was probably the top offensive line recruit out of the province of Saskatchewan three years ago and now he’s been sitting, just waiting patiently behind someone who is an all-Canadian and now he gets a chance to play, so he’s excited for that opportunity.
“Kemal Kochisarli and John Harke are two guys that were here and went to the East-West (all-star) game last year and performed very well. So we’re expecting them to be really good. Carter O’Donnell is a tackle prospect here that I think is capable of playing the next level for sure, maybe even NFL-type football, he’s that talented. We have some pieces here for sure.”
All of which is good news for fifth-year starting quarterback Brad Baker, who threw for 1,473 yards and 14 touchdowns over the final four games last year.
“Just watching him progress, his understanding of the offence, his feel for the offence, his feel for his receivers and all those things, there was tremendous development this off-season on top of what he did during the season last year,” Morris said.