Guilford’s Bell Named ODAC Football Offensive Player of the Week

FOREST, Va. – Guilford College redshirt-junior running back De’Eric Bell (Jackson, Ga./Jackson) received the Old Dominion Athletic Conference’s (ODAC) Offensive Player of the Week Award Sunday. The honor is the third of Bell’s career and the second in as many weeks for the Quakers. Senior quarterback Karsten Miller won the league’s first prize of the season last week.

Bell set league and school records with 428 all-purpose yards in Guilford’s 56-17 victory at Methodist University, tops in NCAA Division III this year. He set a Division III standard with 11 punt returns in the game, which he returned for a Guilford-record 138 yards. Bell also had 137 kickoff return yards, aided by a 97-yard return for a touchdown. He now has three career kickoff returns for touchdowns. The redshirt junior added 16 carries for 78 yards and two scores, as well as four catches for 75 yards. He averaged over 12.5 yards for each of the 34 times he touched the ball.

After two games, Bell leads Division III with 320 all-purpose yards per game and 342 total kick return yards. He is third with a 40.8-yard kickoff return average and 22nd with three rushing touchdowns on the year. Bell stands 26th in both punt return average (12.3) and scoring average (12.0 points per game). His 77.5 rushing yards per game average ranks seventh in the ODAC.

Bell’s exceptional start is moving him higher on a number of the school’s career records listings. He’s within one rushing touchdowns of Guilford’s career mark of 23 held by Josh Schow. Bell needs 103 all-purpose yards to break Chris McKinney’s ’02 Guilford standard of 4,768 yards. He is third with 2,150 career rushing yards and fifth all-time at Guilford in kickoff return yardage (1,211), punt return yardage (503) and punt returns (37).

Coach Chris Rusiewicz’s Quakers renew their rivalry with NCAA Division I-FCS member Davidson College Saturday (9/17) night at 7:00 p.m. in Davidson, North Carolina.