Troy University Athletics
Trojans Take Aim At Arkansas State
11/8/2005 12:00:00 AM | Football
When everything is said and done with the 2005 Troy University football season, the Trojans may be remembered as a great second half team.
For the second week in a row, the Trojans went into halftime facing a deficit. But, for the second week in a row, Coach Larry Blakeney's troops came out ready to play in the second half. Against Louisiana-Lafayette it was a 21-point fourth quarter that forced overtime with the Cajuns.
At homecoming, it was a 21-point outburst over a 10-minute stretch of the second half that turned a 14-7 halftime deficit into a 28-14 victory over Florida Atlantic.
While there were plenty of big performances in the secons half of the game for Troy, two stood out. The first came at the 9:30 mark of the third quarter with the Owls threatening to go up by two scores. Diminutive corner Adrian Ghent made that the right moment for his first interception of the season (second career), stopping the Owls and swinging momentum.
The next big play came moments later when Sean Dawkins picked up three yards on a fourth and one at the Troy 32. It was the seventh time, in 10 tries, this season that Troy has converted on fourth down.
That opened the door for Julian Foster to have his coming out party. The true freshman, who was making just his third start, came to life in the second half. To that point in the game, Foster had completed nine of 17 passes for 92 yards in what had been a pretty typical passing game for the Trojans.
But, after that fourth down conversion, Foster completed eight of his last 10 pass attempts for 179 yards and three touchdowns, turning what had been a pedestrian afternoon passing into one of the 10 best passing performances in Blakeney's tenure as Trojans head coach.
Only three quarterbacks in the last 15 seasons have had better days passing than Foster had on Saturday -- Brock Nutter, Kelvin Simmons and Jeremy Rowell.
But, Foster was not the only Trojan to have a career day. Junior receiver Smokey Hampton also set a career-high with 125 yards receiving on six catches. It was the first game in which a Troy receiver surpassed 100 yards in more than two years.
Troy was able to move the ball successfully against the Owls despite the fact that leading rusher Joel Whinghter did not play in the game because of a rib injury suffered against ULL. His status for this weeks' game at Arkansas State will be determined later in the week.
When the win over FAU did, coupled with losses by league-leader ULM and Arkansas State, was keep the Trojans in the race for a share of the Sun Belt Conference title and a spot in the New Orleans Bowl.
But, for Troy to have any chance at either of those goals, the Trojans must win their final two games. That starts this Saturday against an Arkansas State club that defeated Troy last year in Jonesboro.
The Indians have been somewhat of a Jeckel and Hyde team this season. ASU had a three-game stretch against FIU, ULM and ULL in which it averaged 44 points per game but, over their last two outings the Indians have managed just 10 points in games against FAU and Middle Tennessee.
Still, ASU enters play this week as the top-ranked offensive team in the Sun Belt and also leads the league in another critical statistical category, turnover margin.
Troy is coming off its first turnover free game in more than a year and has turned the ball over just once in the last two games. The Trojans have not had back-to-back turnover free games since the end of the 1993 season against Stephen F. Austin and McNeese State. The Trojans are 21-4-1 under Blakeney in turnover-free games.
SATURDAY'S MATCHUP: The Trojans go back onto the road where they are 2-4 against Sun Belt foes over the last two years and 3-9 overall over the same time ... ASU junior defensive back Kevin Cox and Troy junior linebacker Andre Morgan both hail from Garland, Texas ... The Indians have nine players on their roster from the Los Angeles area in California, which also produced Troy backup quarterback Larry Dockery ... ASU has one player from the state of Alabama, senior fullback Ramon Williams from Daphne ... Troy does not have anyone on its roster from Arkansas ... Troy University has an all-time record of 3-7 in football games against teams from Arkansas, including a 1-4 mark against the Indians ... ASU receivers coach Mike McCarty is a former assistant coach at Troy ... There was some disagrement over the record in the series between the two schools. ASU's record book shows just four previous meetings with Troy, while the Troy record book indicates the teams have played seven times ... It turns out, both books are wrong and the actual series record is 4-1 in favor of ASU. Troy's records indicate games were played in 1966 and 1967, but it turns out those games were actually against Arkansas State Teachers College, which later became Conway State and is now the University of Central Arkansas. The ASU book also does not show a game during the 1950 season, but insead indicates a game against Florence State (now UNA). The UNA records do not show that game, and the score matches the Troy records for that date ... The Trojans are scheduled to face the University of Arkansas during the 2007 season ... Troy is 37-28 all-time in televised games, which this was scheduled to be, but was dropped from the schedule by ESPNU last week ... Since the end of Brock Nutter's record setting four-year run as the Trojans starting quarterback in 2001 (36-12) the Trojans have used five different players at the position. Hansell Bearden had a 4-10 record in 14 starts, Aaron Leak was 9-7 in 16 starts, D.T. McDowell was 4-2 in six starts last year and junior Carl Meadows is 2-4 in six starts this season. Julian Foster is now 2-1 as a starter.
