Liberty travels to Kennesaw to take on the Owls of Kennesaw State at 7pm. The Flames look to win for the 8th time in its last 10 Big South openers.
KSU’s biggest home game in program history.
If you pay any attention to the social media chatter, you can quickly find several tweets/posts from Kennesaw State fans/players/alumni hyping this week’s game up. It hasn’t just started this week, there’s been chatter about this game going back to the end of last season. For KSU, a program in just their 2nd season, they have had this game circled on their schedule for a while.
“Playing in their place, home, first conference game there, they’re going to be fired up and ready,” Coach Gill said. It’s KSU’s homecoming, and they will be looking to make a statement to the rest of the Big South that they have arrived and are ready to compete for a conference championship.
Owls showing progress in year 2.
Five games in to their 2nd season as a football program, Kennesaw State is showing tremendous progress. They picked up their first ever road wins by knocking off Duquesne and Furman in consecutive weeks. The Owls have also shown improvement in most statistical categories. They’ve improved in scoring offense, rushing offense, passing offense, and total offense.
“It’s year 2 for them,” Coach Wimberly said. “So, you can see they are very comfortable in what they’re doing. It’s not a lot of mistakes like last year being their first year. They’re not making a lot of mistakes like you saw last year this time. You can tell they’re very confident. They should be, they’re a good offense.”
Playing against Jacksonville & the option earlier this season can only help.
The Flames have struggled against the option under defensive coordinator Robert Wimberly. He’s mentioned multiple times this season that stopping the option has been an emphasis of his during the off-season. Liberty showed some improvement when they faced non-scholarship Jacksonville earlier this season, holding the Dolphins to 173 rushing yards.
“It definitely helps our young men to have an opportunity to see the option,” Wimberly said. “More or less for the o-line, to see how fast they come off the ball. That’s normally the toughest thing for our young men to get used to is how fast they come off the ball, and they’re really just trying to cut you. They’re trying to cut you, they’ll take your knees out. Now, our young men have experienced that so that’s going to help us.”
Liberty’s new uptempo offense may not be so uptempo all the time.
As we mentioned last week, Liberty’s new uptempo offense has not been as uptempo as we may have expected it to be. The Flames are averaging just a tick over 70 plays per game so far this season compared to averaging 68 plays per game in Gill’s first 4 seasons at Liberty. There’s been times when it seems like the offense is being more methodical rather than going fast. Offensive Coordinator Joe Dailey says there’s a reason for that.
Dante Shells has caught a TD pass in 4 straight games. If he finds the end zone against KSU, he would make program history.
“Each week it’s a different battle, it’s a different game plan design. That entails the tempo with which we play. Sometimes we want to slow down, sometimes we want to speed up, sometimes we want to give the illusion of speed. We’ve mixed a lot of different tempos here throughout the first 5 ball games. We want to get a chance to see, can people handle the intensity of tempo? Can we keep up with the intensity of tempo because sometimes you can play fast and go nowhere. We’ve tried to be really smart depending on where we are in the game situation, and if we need to continue to put our foot on the gas or if we need to slow down and help our defense out because if we’re going 3 & out a bunch it’s no good to go fast. 30 seconds a possession does your defense no good. So, depending on what the situation is in the game, we may speed it up, we may slow down. I’m happy with the progress we’ve made in that department in the sense that our guys have been able to comprehend what we’re trying to get done and understand when it helps us versus when it hurts us.”
Road Woes.
It’s no secret that Liberty has struggled away from Williams Stadium. The Flames are just 10-16 away from Williams Stadium under Gill, compared to 21-6 at home. The struggles have carried over to conference play as Liberty is 6-4 on the road against Big South opponents compared to 10-2 at home. Dating back to last season, the Flames have lost 5 straight games on the road, including 3 Big South losses.
Offensive line continues to be a revolving door.
We’re 5 games into the season, and the Flames have yet to have the starting 5 on the offensive line for any 2 games. 8 different lineman have been shuffled in and out of the starting lineup and several have started at multiple positions. This has been due primarily to injuries. First, projected starter at left guard, Michael Henderman, missed most of the preseason to injury, and, after returning to action against Jacksonville and SMU, he was re-injured and lost for the season. Tanner Hartman and Ethan Crawford have both missed time, and are listed as out for the KSU game. Outside of Aharown Campbell, the rest of the linemen who have played this season had no prior collegiate playing time. With only 8 linemen playing consistently, and 3 of them injured, Liberty is down to just 5 healthy linemen with significant playing experience. Listed as 2nd-team on this week’s depth chart are JUCO transfer Julio Lozano, walk-ons Devin Crisp and Thomas Sargeant, and starting left tackle Aharown Campbell.
Notable quotes.
Turner Gill on the team’s sense of urgency as we move to conference play – “We’ve always had a sense of urgency in every ball game. I know conference games are going to mean a lot from the standpoint of win all your conference games, no one can do anything about it, you’re going to be in the playoffs. So, I think from that standpoint, of that significance, there is a little bit more meaning, but we play hard and get ready for every football game and try to win every football game we can.”
Joe Dailey on what he teaches quarterbacks in the film room – “When you visualize things, your mind can’t really tell a difference between reality and a dream, and that’s why our dreams are so vivid. So, we talk about that a lot at the quarterback position. Playing things out in your mind mentally before you ever get in this building or before you ever get out on the practice field.”
Joe Dailey on Stephon Masha’s mindset since he was benched as starting quarterback – “Stephon was a captain far before he was ever a starter, prior to being demoted. The reason why he was named starter was because of his work-ethic, the attention to detail that he brings to the table, and really the spirit that he operates from. Stephon is never going to change. He’s been the same gentleman he was from day 1 ’til today. A hardworking young man, who’s going to give you everything he has, who’s going to have a phenomenal attitude about it. He’s really kept up with who he was and who he continues to be. Nothing has ever changed.”
My prediction:
Liberty 34, Kennesaw State 28
