Troy Winning Big
Don’t misunderstand Troy football coach Neal Brown. He and the Trojan staff are thrilled that the Trojans posted their second win over a Power Five conference in as many years Saturday, and took down one of college football’s historic programs.
He just doesn’t want his team to follow Saturday’s 24-19 win at Nebraska with a performance anything like last year.
The Trojans knocked off a nationally-ranked LSU team 24-21 in Baton Rouge last Sept. 30. One week later, Troy was a huge favorite in a Sun Belt Conference home game against South Alabama and lost 19-8 – their only league loss.
“A year ago we had the big win over LSU, and I thought our kids didn’t handle it well,” Brown said Monday. “I don’t know if we handled it well as a program. But we laid an egg against South Alabama and didn’t play well at all.”
Brown pointed out a key difference between the Power Five wins, one that he hopes will make a difference this Saturday when Troy opens conference play at a much-improved ULM squad.
“It’s a lot different than last year,” he said. “LSU was ranked and a lot of things had to go our way. Nebraska’s just getting started rebuilding and they’re going to get that going. But our kids expected to win. We didn’t play well offensively but were still able to win the game, so it had quite a different feel than last year.”
The Trojans’ sixth straight road win – the fourth-longest active streak in the country – came courtesy of a 17-0 second-quarter lead, a couple of big special-teams plays and a defense that forced three turnovers and held the Cornhuskers to 5-of-16 third-down conversions. Troy needed that defensive effort after the offense generated only 12 first downs.
“Our offense struggled and didn’t play well,” Brown said. “Defensively we played like we’re capable of playing, by far our best defensive effort of the year, and special teams were the difference in the game.”
Brown said Saturday’s game against the Warhawks is a pivotal one this early in the Sun Belt season.
“Offensively they may have one of the best players in our league in (Marcus) Green at wide receiver, and (quarterback Caleb) Evans I’ve been impressed with. Schematically, they may be doing the best job of anyone in the country. But defense is where they’ve come a long way from last year. Starting out the conference slate, this one is hugely important right at the start.”
Good Numbers
Louisiana senior quarterback Andre Nunez ranks second in the nation in completion percentage, but Ragin’ Cajun head coach Billy Napier says he can play even better.
“We give the quarterbacks the keys to the car on game day,” Napier said, “and they make tons of decisions so it’s critical that guy prepares like no other. We’re a very quarterback driven system and we just have very high expectations for the quarterback position.”
Despite the 56-10 loss at Mississippi State Saturday, Nunez was 21-of-29 passing for 224 yards and a third scoring hookup with wide receiver Ja’Marcus Bradley this season. The Pacoima, Calif., product completed his first eight passes against the Bulldogs, and combined with hitting 19 of his final 20 throws in an easy opening win over Grambling, Nunez had a streak of 27 completions in 28 attempts.
His 78.4 percentage ranks behind only Georgia’s Jake Fromm (80.4, 37-of-46), after he set a school record with an 86.4 mark (19-of-22) against Grambling.
“Outside of a handful of plays, he played pretty well,” said Napier, who serves as his own quarterback coach. “He’d like to have six or eight plays back. But he had a lot of positives. He continues to take care of the ball and he’s shown he can throw under or down the field and still complete at a high level. We want to be a championship level football team here, and to do that you have to get exceptional quarterback play, and that’s the expectation.”
Long Road Home
Louisiana’s opponent this weekend has had more to worry about than slowing down the opposing quarterback.
Coastal Carolina had to move its Saturday game up three days due to the impending arrival of Hurricane Florence, and moved its game site from a home outing to a road game against FCS member Campbell. The Chanticleers took an easy 58-21 win and immediately caught buses to Jacksonville, Fla., to evade the storm.
“We’ve been here since then,” said coach Joe Moglia, “figuring out what high school we can practice at and what we’re doing each day. As important as the games are, the priority has been the safety of the players, the coaches and all their families.”
The Conway, S.C., campus dodged the worst of the storm, but flooding issues are still rampant there as they are virtually everywhere else in the Carolinas in Florence’s wake.
“We don’t make believe that things are not issues,” Moglia said. “We ask the players to adjust. We’re going through and in the middle of a state of emergency and our guys understand that. Normal is not the right word, but we are adjusting the best we can. Everybody’s attitude along those lines has been extraordinary.”
The team and party plans to remain in Jacksonville this week before flying to Lafayette for Saturday’s 6 p.m. (CDT) game at Cajun Field (ESPN+). From there, Moglia hoped that the team could fly home Saturday night.
Mountaineers also Affected
Coastal Carolina wasn’t the only team affected by Hurricane Florence, as Appalachian State had a much-anticipated home game against Southern Mississippi canceled. And that came as a huge disappointment to Mountaineer coach Scott Satterfield.
“We knew our schedule was not going to allow us to play any other time,” said Satterfield. “There was all kinds of talk between administrators and we offered to move to other locations, other times. We really wanted to play the game, and just couldn’t get it to work out.”
The Appalachian State campus got heavy rains Saturday and Sunday. The rain finally relented Monday.
“I do understand with the weather because you never know how that’s going to play out,” Satterfield said. “School was closed Thursday and Friday and we stayed in contact with our guys and most of the weren’t in harm’s way with their families. I was upset for our guys because you only get so many opportunities to play and one of those is now gone.
“But our guys do a great job of rolling with the flow. We found out Wednesday we weren’t going to play so we did a bye week practice and let them go, and we’re looking forward to playing our first home game this weekend.”
The Mountaineers host FCS member Gardner-Webb Saturday.
Rally down South
South Alabama was the Sun Belt’s only winless team going into the past weekend, and when the Jaguars found themselves trailing by 14 points twice in the first half and by 15 midway through the third quarter against Texas State, coach Steve Campbell admitted he was worried.
“We dug ourselves in a hole, but we found a way to come back,” Campbell said after USA scored 25 unanswered points in the final 21:10 to take a 41-31 win in the Sun Belt’s first conference game of 2018. “Our guys kept battling, we made some plays defensively, some plays in special teams and offensively we made plays that gave us a chance to win.”
The visiting Bobcats scored three touchdowns in the game’s first 21 minutes, but Jalen Thompson’s 55-yard interception return for a score made it a one-touchdown game late in the third quarter. Quarterback Evan Orth then threw two touchdown passes in the final two minutes, the second one setup by another Thompson interception that gave first-year coach Campbell his first Jaguar victory.
USA will hold the top spot in the Sun Belt West Division for at least two weeks, since the Jaguars travel to face Memphis in a non-conference game Saturday.
“We talked to our guys about getting on the high ground,” Campbell said of the conference-opening win, “and once you get there, maintain it. You’re not chasing anybody now. We did all we could do this past week and we can’t look ahead or behind, we just have to take care of business one week at a time in league play.”
Long Streak Snapped
Arkansas State’s 29-20 win at Tulsa not only gave the Sun Belt a head-up win over a peer conference and made Blake Anderson the winningest coach in Red Wolves history in his first five seasons at the school, it also snapped a long road streak. A-State hadn’t won a non-conference road game since pulling off a win over Texas A&M in College Station to open the 2008 season.
“That was a big win on the road for us,” Anderson said. “We got down early and had to make a couple of tweaks on the sideline, but we overcame a couple of mistakes and battled. I’m proud of how our defense played and forced turnovers, and how our offense controlled the ball the last seven minutes.”
That win put the Sun Belt at 4-3 against its peer “Group of Five” conferences this season, and 14-12 overall against non-conference foes and 13-3 against non-Power Five league opponents.
“It was another good weekend for our league,” Anderson said. “We were glad to do our part.”