Ahh, a chance to take a break from staring at pages of statistics and talk a little real football. It turns out tonight is Louisiana Monroe’s 6th game too, but that just puts them on a pretty tall pile at this point. Tonight those same Warhawks welcome the Arkansas State Red Wolves for a key Sun Belt matchup. And while it’s not my style to criticize*, no post specifically involving the Red Wolves can be complete without this video (not entirely safe for work, just some language, but if that’s a problem your office probably blocks Youtube anyway).
*not true.
In all some seriousness, tonight’s game is important in the Sun Belt hunt. The conference smartly chose to put four of its best teams on display for back-to-back Tuesday night games, with MTSU-Troy last week and tonight’s game. Arkansas State has only played four games so far, which is messing with my head having spent two days writing up 6 game reports. They opened with Mississippi Valley State, and blew the 1-AA squad away 61-0, the second highest point total in the country. From there, they were understandably crushed by Nebraska, then lost a consecutive 3 point battles to Troy and then (now #12) Iowa. The Red Wolves offensive attack has not been up to par, and the 342 yards per game of offense will have to improve to compete in the Sun Belt.
On the home side, ULM is coming in with a little more momentum, having just swept the Belt’s Florida teams on the way to a 2-0 league start. Through five games, they have the Sun Belt’s top Rushing and Total offense numbers, running for 208 ypg and a total of 418 ypg. Frank Goodin is leading the way for the Warhawks, averaging 92 yards per game, good enough to land in the country’s top 30.
Arkansas State’s run defense is stout- 26th in the country allowing only 106 ypg. Tonight’s game should therefore be an even matchup on the ground, leaving the opportunity there for a QB to take charge and lead their team to a win. Hard to say who has the edge exactly, but with the momentum that ULM is enjoying, I suspect they’ll be hard to beat tonight.
We have a busy day on the Fringe tomorrow, with some sort of recap of this game, another handful of report cards, and a preview of what could be the biggest game of the year between two non-BCS teams.