Game 4 Preview – UTSA vs. Bacone

I don’t have time to put out a full preview, and there’s not a whole lot of info available concerning Bacone, so I’ll just give some quick notes on what I’d like to see from the team tomorrow.

Big game from the tailbacks

Thus far, we haven’t seen any huge runs or exciting play from any of our tailbacks. I’m looking for that to change this week as we continue to try to improve our rushing attack. Hopefully we can take the lead early and get each of the tailbacks plenty of touches and chances to show what they’re capable of.

Ball security, QB to TB exchange

This is a big one. We can’t ever expect to win a game if we fumble the ball six times. Those are six plays that we lost, which completely disrupted the rhythm of the offense. Also, to my previous point, it will be hard to get the running game going if they can’t even get the handoff under control.

Don’t give up big plays on defense, especially on 3rd and 4th down

In the past two weeks, UTSA has given up way too many big plays on 3rd- and 4th-and-long. It’s hard to judge how much of that was due to a weak UTSA secondary or if it was due to going up against two All-American quarterbacks, but we should have our answer tomorrow. Bacone likes to throw the ball, and they have some decent receivers, so this game should be a good indication of how good our secondary really is. Not to mention the inclusion of transfer Erik Brown, who cracked the starting lineup in just his second game with the Roadrunners.

Good special teams play

Last week we were able to fix our problems from the McMurry game, but the Thunderbirds busted a few huge returns on us, exposing some more weaknesses. As the almost-entirely-freshmen special teams unit matures and gains more experience, most of these problems should be fixed, so I’m not too worried about it.

Fan support

As UTSA’s first ever football homecoming, there should be a lot of excitement surrounding the game. Hopefully all of the fans have studied up on when to be quiet (when we have the ball) and when to get loud (when Bacone has the ball).

Bacon puns

I hope everyone’s been working on their best bacon puns for the game against Bacone. I’ve already seen a few good ones on twitter, but I’m expecting a lot more tomorrow. Maybe some of you tailgaters will be enjoying the Bakon Vodka before the game tomorrow as well. (Sorry to whoever posted about the Bakon Vodka a while ago, I would give you credit, but I can’t remember who it was…)

 

Prediction

After the McMurry game, I’m hesitant to predict a huge win, but this is a game that we should win by a fairly large margin. One thing that might hurt us, if twitter is any indication, is that a lot of the Bacone players are pretty pumped up for this game, and rightfully so, considering many of them have not and will likely never again play in a stadium like the Alamodome and in a city like San Antonio. I expect them to come out with that same enthusiasm that we saw from McMurry, so we’ll need to set the tone early in the game to bring them back down to earth.

With that said, I’ll go with 34-13 UTSA.

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Darrell Williams

Darrell started writing about UTSA football before it was even a thing, then he took a few years off, and now he's back.