Steady Willis Opens Eyes
11/2/2016 12:00:00 AM | Football
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - What came first, the confidence, or the success?
Without one, you can't have the other. Classic chicken-and-egg.
In Corey Willis' mind, there was never a doubt. His confidence was, and remains, sky-high. The numbers he is putting up on the football field are increasing justification of his confident posture.
"I've always had the confidence in myself, but coming in as a freshman, you need those guys on the team and you need those coaches to let you know how good they think you can be," said Willis, a junior wide receiver on the Central Michigan football team.
On Tuesday, Willis was named to the Biletnikoff Award Watch List. The annual award goes to the outstanding receiver in college football.
Willis leads CMU with 49 receptions, 721 yards and nine touchdowns. He ranks sixth in the Mid-American Conference with 79.7 receiving yards per game and is seventh in receptions per game (5.3). His nine TD catches tie him for second in the league and rank third (with five others) for a single season in CMU history.
Until this season, Willis had been part of the corps of CMU receivers, a set of hands and speedy legs who saw a considerable amount of playing time and caught his share of balls (37 last year) and occasionally hit the end zone (five TDs coming into the season) while paying his dues and finding his way.
Willis, a 5-foot-10, 175-pound junior from Holland, carries the distinction of having played a role in two of the most memorable plays in program history. He was one of five Chippewas who touched the ball when CMU scored a touchdown on a catch-and-lateral play in the 2014 Bahamas Bowl, and he scored on a Hail Mary pass in the Chippewas' win at Oklahoma State in the second game of the 2016 season.
Willis will have the rest of his life to relive those signature moments - "Look it up on YouTube" he can tell the grandkids - he is hardly a one-hit, or in this case, two-hit, wonder.
He has emerged as quarterback Cooper Rush's favorite target, capable of the big play, certainly, but the steady consistency becoming his calling card. He has caught six passes in six of CMU's last seven games. The time he did not catch six, against Western Michigan on Oct. 1, he caught seven. He has caught a TD pass in seven of CMU's nine games this season, and twice - in back-to-back games against UNLV and Virginia - he made two TD catches.
"When it comes to route running he accepts the challenge like a receiver should, that 'I'm going to beat that guy,'" CMU offensive coordinator Morris Watts said. "When there's a guy covering him, it's a personal challenge to him to beat the guy.
"He's got and extreme amount of confidence that something good is going to happen because it's happened that way in practice."
It's been a natural progression, for Willis, as it tends to be with any student-athlete.
"The biggest thing is just trusting the process," Willis said. "Making sure you are in the right places at the right times, making sure you are doing everything that the coaches say and when your number is called, you make sure you take advantage of it."
And Willis certainly has done that.
"He's improved -- his work habits, his consistency and just his ability," Watts said. "He's always had the good moves. I think he's improved his consistency with coming up with the big catch and he knows he's going to make it and he expects to make it. That has a lot to do with guys being successful. I think that's his biggest improvement."
