The John Carroll backfield put on a show in front of a packed Homecoming crowd, rushing for 303 yards in a 42-7 victory over Marietta College at Don Shula Stadium.

Ro Golphin and Sam Kukura led the way offensively for the Blue Streaks, running for 132 yards and 117 yards, respectively.  It is the third consecutive home game in which JCU had two 100-yard rushers.

"It all starts with the guys up front.  They really make our jobs easy when we're running five, six yards without getting touched. It's absolutely incredible," Kukura said.  "It's just up to us to make one guy miss, but the guys up front really set the tone in this game and that's what sparked us."  

"There is no better feeling than scoring a touchdown on a run play," said senior left tackle Dominic DiTirro.  "When you can run on a team you can really be successful."

Golphin got things going with a 31-yard touchdown run on the first drive of the game, making multiple Pioneers miss on the way to the end zone.   The Blue Streaks never looked back as Kukura added a touchdown of his own in the first quarter, the first of his two on the day.  

Quarterback Anthony Moeglin turned in a solid performance, ending the day completing 14-of-16 passes for 136 yards with a total quarterback rating of 158.9.  In the last three games, Moeglin has completed 85.2% of his passes (58/68) for 538 yards and 8 total touchdowns.  

The Blue Streaks held the Pioneer offense to 236 total yards one week after they put up 62 points and over 600 yards of offense. "Our big focus was to make them one dimensional and take away the run game and force them to beat us from the pocket, and I think we did a good job of that," defensive coordinator Brandon Staley said. Marietta ended the day with 236 yards of total offense, 105 of which came on the ground.  

The Blue Streaks forced three Pioneer turnovers, the first of which came in the opening quarter when Anthony Christopher knocked the ball loose from Nick Hineman and Jovon Dawson jumped on it to give JCU possession at the Marietta 24 yard line.  The turnover that solidified the game for the Blue Streaks was in the third quarter when Ray Brewster intercepted a Darrien Fields pass at the JCU 3-yard line, keeping the Pioneers out of the end zone.  The Blue Streak offense took over from there, driving 97 yards in 10:42 that ended with a two-yard Golphin touchdown run.

John Carroll has only allowed one first half touchdown all season and 16 total first half points. Thirteen of those points came against Wisconsin-Oshkosh on Sept. 3.  Jovon Dawson and Mason McKenrick led the Blue Streaks with seven tackles each and McKenrick, along with Jerome Brundidge and Jimmy Thomas, added sacks on the day.  

The Blue Streaks travel to Ada, Ohio next Saturday for a 6:00 p.m. kickoff against Ohio Northern.