What You Need To Know About UTSA
The Roadrunner’s head coach, Larry Coker, was hired by UTSA in March of 2009 to start their program. He was voted National Coach of the Year two times and won the 2001 National Championship as the first-year coach of the Miami Hurricanes. Coker has coached 26 first-team All-Americans, 96 first-team All-Conference selections and 63 academic All-Conference honorees.
Texas-San Antonio’s junior quarterback returns to lead the team after taking almost every offensive snap last season. That was his first time playing since his senior year of high school. He completed 172-of-307 passes (56%) for 2,148 yards and 14 touchdowns. He also added 285 yards on the ground with three touchdowns.
Wide receiver Kam Jones, a sophomore, converted from quarterback to play all 10 games, eight starts, for the roadrunners. He accounted for a team-leading 88.1 all-purpose yards per game while leading the team with 39 receptions for 578 yards (14.8 yards per catch) and two touchdowns. He added 22 rushes for 127 yards (5.8 yards per rush) and a touchdown. Jones also averaged 24.4 yards per kickoff return in his seven returns.
Sophomore wide receiver Brandon Freeman was the roadrunners deep threat last season. He was second on the team with 30 catches for 419 yards (14.0 average). He lead the receivers with four touchdowns. Against UC Davis, he caught five passes for 108 yards including a 59-yard touchdown catch in the fourth quarter. Actually, he averaged 42 yards per touchdown reception.
The roadrunner defense was very good at converting turnovers into points. They forced 21 turnovers in all, 11 fumble recoveries and 10 interceptions. They converted those turnovers into 15 scores with 12 of them being touchdowns.
Linebacker Steven Kurfehs finished third on the team in tackles with 61 (32 solo, 29 assists) although he missed the final three games due to injury. He moved from safety to linebacker in the 2010 “practice” season. Senior linebacker Brandon Reeves started all 10 games and led the team wtih 69 tackles (27 solo, 42 assists).
Sophomore safety Nic Johnston played ‘Dawg’ in the roadrunners 4-2-5 defensive scheme. He recovered three fumbles while forcing two and intercepted two passes in the teams 10 games. He also finished fourth on the team with 59 tackles (30 solo, 29 assists) with nine of them being for losses.
Sophomore safety Triston Wade forced three fumbles, recovered two and also picked off two. He also had 39 tackles (23 solo, 16 assists) last season.
The roadrunners blocked five kicks last season, three field goals, one punt and an extra point. However, it was a blocked field goal of their own that allowed the Jaguars to defeat UTSA in the Alomodome last season.
Texas-San Antonio had an average attendance of 35,521 last season in their first season. They set a record for a start-up program with 56,743 atendees to their first ever game.
As UTSA makes the move to the FBS ranks, they will be the youngest team in the nation with only six seniors (five scholarship) on their 97 man roster. Additionally only 16 juniors are on the team. The remainder being made up of 42 sophomores and 33 freshmen. Head coach Larry Coker and his staff have filled a vast majority of their team with Texas natives. 87 players are from the state, which makes up 89.7% of the roster.
Fox Sports Southwest will be airing a 30-minute show titled “UTSA Football Insider”. Additionally, they are scheduled to have three games streamed online including the season opener at Ladd-Peebles Stadium.
The coaching staff has made some changes on the defense by going with speed in their starting defensive ends. COdy rogers played mostly in the ‘Hawk’ and safety positions last season will make the move to add speed at that position.
UTSA will have several freshmen in major starting or backup roles. True freshman Zach Hester will start at right guard. Freshmen will back up the Center, left and right tackle.
The roadrunners use a running back by committee approach and are loaded with veterans in the backfield. They caused problems running the option against the Jags last season as did Cal Poly in the season finale.
Men’s Basketball Adds Two Transfers
South Alabama Men’s Basketball team picked up two late transfers. Jeremy Jones and Dionte Ferguson have enrolled at South Alabama and will join the basketball program head basketball coach Ronnie Arrow announced on Wednesday.
Since both transfer from Division I schools, they will have to sit out the 2012-2013 season and will be eligibile the next season.
Jones transfers to USA from Kansas State, where he played for one season and will have one year of eligibility remaining. He is a 6’2″ guard from Chicago. He averaged 3.1 points in 20 games last season for Kansas State.
As a member of Seward County Community College in 2010-2011, Jones led them to a 27-7 record and a runner-up finish in the Region VI tournament. He averaged 18.6 points and 4.5 assists in 34 games to lead the team. He was honored as part of the Third Team NJCAA All-American and First Team All-Region VI honors.
“Jeremy was a very good player at Seward and we recruited him pretty hard,” head coach Ronnie Arrow stated. “He decided he wanted to go to a large school like Kansas State, but I don’t think he would have been as interested in us now if we didn’t recruit him so hard. He only has one year left so he can sit this year, practice with us every day and learn our system. Next year, we graduate we three players so it’s a good time for a player his size to come here.”
Ferguson transfers from Morehead State after two seasons and will have two seasons of eligibility left. Ferguson, a native of Prattville, stands 6’7″ tall. He played in 37 games in two seasons at Morehead State and averaged 1.2 points per game. “After talking with Morehead State’s coaching staff, Dionte is a player they would like to have stayed, but he wanted to get closer to home,” Arrow said. “He’s a strong player that can get physical. He’s mostly a ‘4’ player that can go outside, but he’s an athlete and strong. We feel like, after spending a year getting to know our system, he has a really good chance of coming in and playing a lot the next two years.”
Sun Belt Looks To Catch C-USA, Mountain West Conferences
Ralph Russo, an AP College Football writer, published a piece on Yahoo! Sports this week about the Sun Belt Conference aiming to catch Conference-USA and the Mountain West as being the “best of the rest” conference.
The Sun Belt is now 10 years old and up until now they have been considered among the lower end of the “have-not” conferences. But they continue to take small steps forward amongst its peer conferences. Last year the Sun Belt tallied a 7-6 record against their peer conferences.
They finished the season with a 5-2 record against Conference-USA. C-USA is their direct competition in the region for players, attention and even schools most recently as they will be adding Florida International and North Texas from the Sun Belt next season.
“The goal of the Sun Belt right now is to be the best of the quote, ‘below the line conferences,'” Benson is quoted in the article. “There’s going to be five (conferences) above the line and five below the line. The Sun Belt’s goal is going to be to compete with those other conferences.”
Troy University President Jack Hawkins was quoted from an email sent to the AP in the article as well. “In my estimation the competitive position of the Sun Belt exceeds its ‘brand,'” he said. “This will change very soon. When its brand matches reality, the Sun Belt will equal or exceed several non-AQ (automatic qualifier) conferences it sought to emulate just a few years ago.”
Recently the WAC announced this will be it’s last season as a football conference. This was after Carl Benson took over the Sun Belt Commissioner spot after Wright Waters announced his retirement earlier this year. He led the WAC through 17 years of almost constant change.
The dominoes of conference realignment fell this past offseason when the Mountain West Conference rebuilt itself after losing schools to the ACC to fill spots left when schools left the ACC for the Big East and the Big 12. The Mountain West added schools from the WAC. C-USA lost schools to the ACC as well and raided the Sun Belt for Florida International and North Texas to fill empty spots.
Additionally, C-USA will be adding Texas-San Antonio who some thought the Sun Belt was interested in adding.
After losing two schools, the Sun Belt was quick to add two football schools, both from lower divisions to fill their empty slots. Georgia State, who began football in 2010, and Texas State who will play in the WAC as a transitional team in 2012. Benson also added Texas-Arlington as a second non-football school to replace Denver University and compliment Arkansas-Little Rock who also does not sponsor football.
The Sun Belt, like their peer conferences, typically schedule a number of “upper tier” schools for what most people call “money games.” These games are scheduled without a guarantee of a return game and often pay upwards of $1 millions these days.
Benson would like to see this change in favor of playing more games against peer conferences. “We’ve talked about scheduling philosophy, scheduling strategy. Ideally we’d like to establish across the board some scheduling parameters that would limit those guarantee games to one a year,” Benson was quoted as saying.
Western Kentucky is adopting that philosophy. According to the schools president, they are limiting themselves to one single-game contract per year. This season they have a single-game contract with the University of Alabama, they play FCS Austin Peay as their version of a guarantee game, then a sort of rivalry with Kentucky and a home game against Southern Miss.
South Alabama somewhat adopted that philosophy too it seems. But they have been scheduling two-for-one’s with some members of the “upper tier” conferences. The Jags are currently in the midst of series with N.C. State where they travel to Raleigh twice (2011, 2012) for a sincle return game in Mobile (2015) and Kent State (2011, 2012 and in Mobile 2013). They also have similar contracts with Tulane, Oklahoma State and Mississippi State for future schedules.
But the Jags also have money games on the horizon as well. They have single game contracts with Tennessee, Georgia, Nebraska (x2), LSU and Ole Miss. But these, similarly to WKU, are limited to one per season.
As Benson points out to Russo, “What my goal would be is for the Sun Belt to enhance our assets, our characteristics, so if and when the time comes that Conference USA comes looking to the Sun Belt for a replacement team because Conference USA lost school A, B or C, that the Sun Belt member will look at what the Sun Belt provides and come to the conclusion that there’s no reason for us to leave the Sun Belt.”
What the conference needs to do is to expand to 12 football schools. Why do they need to do this? They need a conference championship game.
The extra game for the conference would bring in lots of revenue for the conference. But the television exposure could be worth just as much. This game would be one of only seven or eight games that weekend. But who do you add?
You can read his article at Yahoo! Sports here.
Jags Squeeze In Practice Beween Rain Bands On Tuesday
Quarterback CJ Bennett prepares to take a snap in the light rain at the Jaguar Practice Facility in the opening week of preseason camp.
As the news that the South Alabama season opening game against Texas-San Antonio had been postponed until Saturday at 1pm, the football team took the opportunity to squeeze in a practice between the rain squalls.
“When we got up this morning and realized we were going to play on Saturday (instead of Thursday), I said if we don’t practice outside today, we probably won’t be able to practice outside another day this week,” head coach Joey Jones commented. “We wanted to get a good day in outside, and it was the best thing that we could do.”
The practices lasted about two hours on the field turf practice field and head coach Joey Jones said that the players responded well to the change in practice schedule. They were originally scheduled to practice around 3pm in Jag Gym. “Our game plan is solid and we feel good about it,” Jones said. “We have a couple more days to polish things. I think it was critical that we were able to get outside though. We don’t know what’s going to happen over the next two days. So we don’t have to go three days in a row without practicing outside. Hopefully we can find an hour or two in the next couple of days to get out again.”
ESPN3 will still broadcast the game on Saturday via their online streaming video service. Check your local internet provider to see if you have access.
Joey Jones TV Show Cancelled This Week
The Joey Jones TV Show will not be recorded today.
Originally scheduled to be recorded live at Wintzell’s Oyster House on Airport Boulevard beginning around 11am has been cancelled due to Hurricane Isaac coverage. The airing of the show has also been cancelled for Saturday morning.
The Joey Jones TV Show will be recorded throughout the season on Wednesday mornings at 11am at Wintzell’s Oyster House on Airport Boulevard. They will then be aired on WJTC on Saturday mornings at 10:30am before the SEC Game of the Week.
USA vs UTSA Moved To Saturday
Official word has come that the South Alabama vs Texas-San Antonio game has been moved to Saturday, September 1 with kickoff scheduled for 1pm at Ladd-Peebles Stadium.
South Alabama Is More Experienced Than Many Think
The Offensive line gets set while Coach Clark directs the defense during a practice early preseason camp.
You may already know the cliche “defense wins championships.” Over the last three college football seasons you can see that a stifling defense does win championships. While South Alabama is far from that level, they do have a very experienced defense.
The team was unclassified by the NCAA in their first two years of competition so the players who joined the team were allowed to participate in games during their redshirt season. This allows them to play in all five of their seasons of eligibility.
The defense is the more experienced side of the ball. Four seniors, six juniors and a sophomore on the first team defense. The senior starters are Anthony Taylor at Jack linebacker, Jake Johnson at Mike linebacker, B.J. Scott at safety and Andy Dalgleish at nose tackle.
Junior defensive starters include Montavious Williams at tackle, Alex Page at end, Clifton Crews at Sam linebacker, Enrique William at Will linebacker, Darrius Marrow at cornerback and Tyrell Pearson at cornerback. Alonzo Long is the only sophomore starting on the defense at strong safety. Long and Pearson are both JuCo transfers.
There are five sophomore starters on the offense with five of them entering into their third season of play. They are joined by one senior, two juniors and one redshirt freshman. Trey Clark at Center is the only Senior slated in as a starter with Tremain Smith listed as a possible starter at right tackle. Junior starters are Bryant Lavender with Greg Hollinger and Corey Waldon both listed as optional starters. Sophomore starters are Drew Dearman at left guard, Shaun Artz at right guard, C.J. Bennett at quarterback and Demetre Baker at running back with Wes Saxton at tight end, Ucambre Williams at left tackle, Melvin Meggs, Jereme Jones at receiver are all optional starters.
So when the Jags hit the field on *Thursday, they will be an experienced team ready for competition. While they are not eligible for the Sun Belt Conference championship hopefully the experience on the defense, and on offense for that matter, will translate into a very competitive season.
The size and experience is what worries UTSA defensive coordinator Neal Neathery. He mentioned that Baker and Kendall Houston took turns exploiting holes opened up by the offensive line in the Jaguars 30-27 win in the Alamodome. “Both of the (backs) they played were physical, strong, in between the tackles runners. I thought it was a game where we didn’t feel great about ourselves when it was over when it comes to who was the tougher team,” Neathery said.
“Just as a unit last year they were probably the toughest, most physical offensive line we played,” Neathery said. “They were really good, and their running backs had a lot to do with that.”
* Currently the Jaguars are set to kickoff on Thursday, August 30th against Texas-San Antonio but Tropical Storm Isaac could postpone the game.
Mid-Day Weather Update
As of 12:30pm, the South Alabama vs UTSA game is STILL scheduled to be played at 6:30pm on Thursday, August 30th at Ladd-Peebles Stadium.
The long range forecase on www.weather.com currently has Thursday night with a low of 78 degrees with diminishing rain at around 40% with winds from the Southeast at 10mph.
The University continues to monitor Isaac for any changes in pattern and will continue to send updates.
Jag Volleyball Starts Season Well
The South Alabama Volleyball team had a great start to the season over the weekend. After an opening loss to Central Arkansas, they rebounded and defeated Southern Miss (straight sets) and Louisiana Tech to start the season 2-1.
Jenna Hassell and Olivia Mohler were both named to the Southern Miss Invitational All-Tournament team for their efforts. This win over La. Tech was the Jags first since the 2000 season.
Mohler let the Jags on both sides of the net for the last two matches in a row. In the win over La. Tech, Mohler had 14 kills, five block assists, and hit .423. Melissa Waelter added 12 kills while Lindsay Schwartz added 10. Jaguar setter Katariina Kananen had 39 assists and 16 digs for her 15th career double-double. Junior libero added 15 digs of her own.
The Jags will head to St. Louis, Mo. for the Active Ankle Challenge hosted by St. Louis. They will open against Southern Illinois at 4:30pm on Friday.
Fan Day Success While Eyes Watch The Tropics
The coaches and players set up in the Mitchell Center for the annual South Alabama Fan Day. The players were set up at tables that lined the edge of the Mitchell Center floor with the USA Bookstore, Ticket Office and USA National Alumni Association in the center. The bookstore had a limited setup with tumblers, Nike game jersey’s, hats, seat cushions, autograph footballs and a new design t-shirt.
The lines were long as fans lined up to get autographs of the Jaguar’s student-athletes. But the impending storm in the tropics has everyone wondering if the Thursday night game is going to go on as scheduled or if it will need to be rescheduled.
The weekend forecasts kept inching the projected path further west with each update going from Panama City to Mobile itself then to the Biloxi area and now it is projected for New Orleans. However, there is a cone where they predict it to make landfall within. As of the 6am CDT update, Mobile is not currently within that cone, but Mobile does not need to be in the cone to drastically affected. The strongest winds and storm surge are on the eastern side of the eye of a hurricane.
Currently classes are going to meet as normal on Monday and a decision will be made by noon as to further class schedules this week. Any decision on the South Alabama versus Texas-San Antonio game will probably be made by 5pm on Monday. The current options look to be rescheduling the game for a Saturday evening or Sunday evening game. This depends on when UTSA would be able to fly into Mobile for the game.
As soon as any official decision is made, Thunderjags will post it online on the website, twitter and facebook.