Ag football gears up for Arkansas State
The Utah State football team will be playing its fourth straight, and final, road game when the Aggies meet Arkansas State on Thursday. Both teams are going into the game with a short week of practice and identical records of 2-7.
However, there is something very different between these two teams. One will be playing for a head coach that will not be the head coach next season.
The Aggies are going into this Thursday night game on short rest and news of their coach being fired. But since head coach Mick Dennehy is still coaching the final two games of the season, USU is still looking to improve on their 2-7 record.
“[Arkansas State] lost a tough one last week at Idaho,” assistant coach Chris Tabor said. “I am sure they got back late, too. It is going to be a short week preparation wise, but we are going to go in focused and ready to go and hopefully come out on top.”
In the past, Utah State hasn’t played very well on games that aren’t on Saturday. The team has lost nine straight games when not playing on Saturday, this dating back to 1993 when the Aggies won the Las Vegas bowl against Ball State on a Friday night.
The Aggies lead the series over the Indians 3-1. The first game Utah State lost under head coach John L. Smith in 1995 but since then the Aggies have won three straight, 20-14, 44-21 and 49-0.
“They have had a string of bad luck themselves in regards to wins and losses and I am sure they are eager to get back on the field, just like we are for Thursday night’s match up,” Tabor said. “They are a much improved football team from last year. We got the better of them last year. They committed a lot of turnovers [seven] and we were able to capitalize on those things.”
The Aggies have been struggling on offense recently but last Saturday’s game they seemed to break out of their funk a little bit.
Tabor said Travis Cox played a good game, and the protection up front was better than it usually is. Chris Forbes also had an improved running game and the receivers played very well, Tabor said.
“I thought our kids came out focused and ready to go [last Saturday],” Tabor said. “I thought they were loose. It was fun down there. Even when we were down, I never sensed that at one point in time we felt like ‘oh no, we are going to lose this game.’
“It was just the opposite that we were going to win this thing. Even on the Hail Mary at the end of the game, as crazy as it sounds, I felt like when we played New Mexico a few years ago and capitalized on that, I thought that would happen.”
Cox this season has accounted for 11 of the Aggies touchdowns. Nine were through the air and two were rushing. He also has only thrown one interception in the past three games, a hail marry throw in the last play of the UL-Monroe game.
Tabor said if the Aggies improved in certain areas they would be successful in their last two games this season.
“We have got to improve in some areas, for example down in the red zone, we need to come away with more points and take advantage of those things,” Tabor said. “If we do, we will put ourselves in position to beat Arkansas State.”
-kcaustin@cc.usu.edu