Liberty football notes, 9/9
PROMOS:
* Check tomorrow’s dead tree News & Advance for a story on Brandon Streeter’s first game as Liberty’s offensive coordinator.
* Follow the blog on Twitter, if you’d like, of course.
* Each week, we’ll try to catch up with a beat writer that covers Liberty’s opponent to get the skinny on the opposition for the week. This week, Joe Johnson of the Durham Sun-Herald was nice enough to take some time to answer some questions about the Eagles. The interview:
CL North Carolina Central and Winston-Salem State both left the CIAA to pursue Division I athletics at roughly the same time. What was the impetus for this decision on NCCU’s end, and what is the status of NCCU’s bid to join the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference?
JJ NCCU’s decision to pursue membership in Division I is all about exposure and money. NCCU is a growing school and continued membership in the CIAA and Division II was viewed as confining. NCCU still is in the transition phase to Division I but the school has begun to reap some of the monetary benefits, especially in basketball. Last season the basketball team played a whirlwind schedule that had it away for most of the schedule. It was a necessary evil since the school has not yet been accepted into a conference so it can enjoy the profit sharing that often goes along with being in a league. The MEAC seems to be the natural fit for NCCU and Winston-Salem State, which is a year ahead of NCCU in the process. The MEAC, I think could accommodate both schools, but it is still going to be up to the league.
CL In NCCU’s first two years of playing FCS football, the Eagles only won four games against full-fledged Division I members, twice beating North Carolina A&T and twice knocking off Savannah State. With that said, how much does last week’s game against Hampton—a traditional MEAC contender—signify the progress being made within the Eagles’ program?
JJ NCCU coach Mose Rison said he we pleased with the effort his team gave against Hampton despite letting it slip away in the final three minutes. NCCU has about 50 players on scholarship this season and Rison said he hopes to get up closer to the limit next season. He has implemented a red-shirt program and has begun stocking his team with veteran players who should pay dividends in the future.
CL What did Michael Johnson do to earn the starting quarterback nod over Keon Williams? And why did Johnson return to NCCU after spending some time at Tulsa? What didn’t work out for him there?
JJ Michael Johnson earned the starting job because of his natural ability and he physically is bigger than Williams. Johnson is listed at 6-2, 230, while Williams is 6-0, 183. Johnson missed two series in the opener against Hampton with cramps and Williams went in and did a serviceable job. Rison said he was happy with the way Williams played, especially in the second series after he had a chance to get a feel for the game. Johnson said the competition against Williams has been friendly and he respects Williams’ abilities as a quarterback.
CL How disappointed was Mose Rison with the penalties last week, considering he made some alterations in the training camp schedule to guard against those sort of mental breakdowns in the season’s opening week?
JJ Rison called all the penalties his team took correctable mistakes. They certainly put his team in a difficult situation against Hampton, especially in the the fourth quarter. He said he was pleased with the way preseason camp was conducted but that some of the mental breakdowns his team suffered were just part of the first game of the season.
CL How big of a coup was it for the Eagles to get cross-town foe Duke on the schedule this season, and what kind of anticipation is there within the program for that game in particular?
JJ NCCU getting to play Duke is a big deal but Rison said he isn’t ready to talk about it. In today’s football scheduling landscape, the game should prove beneficial for both Duke and NCCU. Duke is in another rebuilding project and NCCU is aspiring to full Division I membership.
We thank Johnson for his time.
***
Some other random bullet-point observations today:
* NC Central is not far removed from being a pretty good Division II program. In 2006, the Eagles went 11-1 and advanced to the Division II playoffs, where they lost 24-17 to Delta State. In 2005, NCCU was 10-2 and lost to North Alabama 24-21 in the first-round of the playoffs. In 2004, NCCU was 8-2. So this is a program with a proud tradition that’s trying to work its way back up while transitioning to Division I.
* NCCU has had plenty of NFL draft picks, but only once since 1989—Greg Peterson, who was taken in the fifth-round of the 2007 draft.
* NCCU’s only first-round NFL draft pick—OG Doug Wilkerson, who went 14th overall to the Houston Oilers in 1970.
* I meant to post this a couple of weeks back, but I’m scatterbrained, so I forgot. I covered the Jefferson Forest-Northside football game two weeks ago, and two players that have had contact with Liberty were on the field for Northside. I was real impressed with LB Nick Sigmon, who also played right guard for the Vikings. He looks very similar to Chad Brown in build and plays fast with a lot of energy. It was clear that he was the best defensive player on the field that night, and he was a big reason why the Vikings held the Cavaliers to just six points. The other player was ATH Dustin Phelps, who scored on a long touchdown run and broke probably five or six tackles along the way. He had a little trouble handling punts, muffing two of them. But he’s definitely quick, if a little undersized.
* Another recruiting note: ATH/DB Brandon Stegall, who plays for head coach Mike Minter at First Assembly Christian in Concord, N.C., will be on campus this weekend for an unofficial visit. Stegall visited North Carolina last weekend and his parents both have family in the Lynchburg area. Minter is a former Carolina Panthers defensive back.
Stegall’s Rivals page is here
* Liberty coach Danny Rocco talked more Tuesday about the fourth-down call in last Saturday’s game against West Virginia that led to the Flames’ first touchdown. Liberty trailed 10-3 at the time: “It was a good call, wasn’t it?“ Rocco joked. “There were a couple of things that I had given great thought to going into the game. One of them was there was going to have to be two or three times that we would have to utilize an element of surprise. That there was one time that I chose to do that. As Mike (Brown) stretched the ball out on the third-down play, we were going to have a fourth and short two, and I thought a makeable two. So without any hesitation, I told coach Streeter to go for it. We decided to run a sprint-out pass. We already had an opportunity for Tommy (Beecher) to gain some yards running the ball. But what happened was they were slow to the line. They did not think we were going to go for it. So we’re out on the ball and they’re still getting lined up. They weren’t set. They weren’t really ready. Streeter made a great call in terms of the concept that we ran, and we just kind of beat them to the punch. “I knew we’d have to do that a couple of times in this game, and I chose to do it there. I also did not want to fall too far behind. I felt going in that the longer we could match scores with them, the better off we would be. If we could get to 10-10 there, I felt that would give our team great confidence. “The other thought that was tied into that—and we never got to this point because they changed their kickoff return team—but as I thought about this in the summer and in our weekly preparation, what we were going to do next was we were going to onsides kick. They were vulnerable to a dribble kick, a surprise onsides kick, but they changed their formation over the summer. So in my mind, I was trying to look at some scenarios where we might be able to get a quick score, beat them to the punch and capitalize again and really gain momentum.“ * Rocco’s scouting report on the North Carolina Central defense: “Their defense is a little bit of a hybrid between us (3-4) and West Virginia (3-3-5 stack). They’ll play three down guys quite a bit. On occasion, they’ll take one of the outside linebackers and put his hand on the ground and they’ll play as a four-down scheme. They’re very multiple. They play a lot of man coverage. Obviously, we’re going to have to execute in the passing game. They play man coverage to get a safety down in the box to negate some of the runs you might be able to have. So we’re going to have to throw the ball with some execution, and we’re going to have to get our vertical passing game going. That was something I talked to the team about yesterday. I wanted to make sure offensively we did a better job of protecting our quarterback. We need to do a better job of getting the run game going, and I want to be able to get some vertical shots down the field this week. That’s something we’re going to spend a lot of time on this week in practice.“ Posted by Chris Lang at 04:49 PM.
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