Liberty held its first full press conference of the season today at the Williams Football Operations Center in anticipation of Saturday’s home opener with St. Francis. Kickoff is at noon. Let’s get right to the bullet-point news and notes.

* Look in tomorrow’s News & Advance for a story on Liberty senior center Matt Camire, a former walk-on who has earned a scholarship and the starting job.

* Thursday, I’ll have a story on Korrey Davis’ return home, as he’ll play his first game in a Liberty uniform at the stadium where Heritage High School plays its game.

* Friday, I’ll catch up with Liberty cornerback KaJuan Lee to talk about how he’s rebounded from the tough play at the end of last year’s Stony Brook game.

* Injury updates: The biggest injury to note is the left MCL strain receiver Ervin Garner is dealing with. He’ll probably miss Saturday’s opener, but he’s doing his best to work his way back onto the field. At practice today, he was running at close to full speed up and down the sidelines.

“If you talk to Ervin today, he’ll tell you he’s going to play Saturday,“ Liberty coach Danny Rocco said. “So I think we’re closing in on being where we need to be. ... It has been healing at a very good pace. He was jogging (Monday) night. As Tuesday goes, there’s a chance he could be physically ready to perform on Saturday. All I’m saying is of the guys on the injured reserve, he’s most unlikely to make it to the game Saturday.“

Also, FB Francis Bah was wearing a walking boot at practice today, but he should be fine. Apparently, he suffered some sort of severe scrape on his left shin and the wound got infected. He was heavily taped at practice and could be back on the field as soon as Wednesday, Rocco said.

* Rocco gave an update on the status of receiver Jimmy Eden, who has been out since undergoing an emergency appendectomy last month. Saw Eden walking around at practice today and he looks like he’s lost a ton of weight, and regaining that bulk will be his biggest task in the weeks going forward.

“Jimmy is doing much, much better,“ Rocco said. “It really is one of those situations where it is kind of one day at a time. I don’t know exactly where he is right now in his ability to eat all foods. This is a guy who for a couple of weeks was on a soft-food diet with soups and Jello-Os and waters and that kind of thing. So he’s lost a lot of weight, and he’s the kind of body type who can’t afford to lose much weight. He is slowly getting his legs underneath him and slowly getting his strength back. I’d say it’s a long way back, but he will come back. And this isn’t one of those situations that’s going to jeopardize his career. But it’s certainly set back the position and his opportunity on the front end of the season to make a contribution. But he’ll be back, hopefully prior to conference play, and he’ll give us a little boost at the wide receiver position.

“What that’s done is that it’s forced us to take a real hard look at Greg Pratt and a real hard look at Gabe Henderson.“

* Rocco had a good relationship with the former coaching staff at St. Francis, and he and former Red Flash coach Dave Opfar played college ball together at Penn State. Chris Villarrial, who was the offensive coordinator at SFU last season, has taken over as head coach, and though Rocco and Villarrial are both Pennsylvania guys, they don’t know each other very well.

“We’ve e-mailed a couple of times here in the last week and a half, and we’ve exchanged several voice mails,“ Rocco said. “I actually just got a voicemail from Chris as I was walking in here. I know him through reputation. He was an outstanding football player and played in the National Football League for close to a decade. He had some acclaim, you know, Pro Bowl opportunities, all-pro opportunities. As I watched their program last year with interest, it became apparent to me they had gotten better, even though their record didn’t have a lot of wins to show for it. At the beginning of the season, they played New Hampshire at New Hampshire (and lost) 24-14. New Hampshire is an FCS top-10 program. They played Morehead State to a 30-0 win up at St. Francis. Then they finished the year against Central Connecticut State, losing 14-13 in a game Central Connecticut State won that secured first place in the Northeast Conference.

“So I followed them, and the one thing I did note was that they were running the ball better, running the ball with more consistency. And that’s kind of held true in the videotape as we’ve started our film study this summer. I think Chris’ expertise is on the offensive side of the ball and the offensive line play and the running schemes and the run preparation. I think that’s where he’s going to try to play this game this week in an attempt to control the ball and run the clock and move the sticks.“

* Rocco took the team to City Stadium Saturday to practice and get used to the environment. His take on the experience:

“I didn’t feel like we were where we needed to be until we completed our work on Saturday,“ he said. “We had a really, really long day Saturday. We had a walk-on tryout Saturday morning here at Williams Stadium. We had team meetings early in the morning and we loaded a bus to go over to City Stadium. I wanted to make everything as close as possible as I could to the actual gameday environment, in terms of stretching and warming up and sideline organization. So when we got to the stadium, we practiced an 84-play script that includes a number of different situations—long drives, sudden-change situations, special teams plays, unique plays, unusual plays. It was hot. The kids worked hard. For the most part I felt like the field surface was in good shape. It’s a nice stadium. The accommodations were really good. The Lynchburg Hillcats and that whole organization and operation have been really supportive of our efforts here. I really expect to have a good experience out here on Saturday.

“We will go over there Friday afternoon for our walkthrough. The only thing I want to do more of is I want to do a little more running and catching the football, especially down in the red zone so our quarterbacks and receivers can get a feel for the flags and the end zone and being able to make plays in the corners of the end zone. I think we’re a lot better off for having been there, and we’re a lot closer to being ready to play due to our efforts last weekend.“

—Three first-year players in the program will definitely play this season, Rocco said: Freshman WR Gabe Henderson, freshman LB Scott Hyland and sophomore DB Pierre Hawkes. Unless some sort of injury need strikes, it seems that rest of the freshman class will redshirt.

—Rocco was really unhappy with the team’s—how to put this diplomatically—mental focus today at practice. He lit into the whole team pretty good at one point, so it will be interesting to see how the team responds tomorrow. Maybe it takes an outburst to really get a team to realize that training camp is over and that a game week has arrived. As Rocco noted earlier, this St. Francis team was 2-9 a year ago, but the Red Flash hung in there with a top-10 New Hampshire team in the opener. I don’t think this is the same program that lost 68-10 to Liberty three years ago here. I’d expect a better game than most people are expecting, but that’s just one reporter’s opinion.

We’ll be back tomorrow with the weekly predictions, posted a day early because of the number of Thursday night games this week.