Whether or not classmate and teammate Derrick Craine is able to suit up for Saturday’s home football game against VMI, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga senior wide receiver C.J. Board isn’t worried that Craine might not impact the Southern Conference contest.
“Just his personality,” Board said during the school’s weekly media luncheon Tuesday. “Derrick’s an uplifting person, a motivator. Even if he can’t play, we’ll be able to hear him cheering for us from the sideline.”
But if Craine’s tender ankle keeps the team’s best running back off the field, it definitely puts more pressure on those who might get most of his 16 carries per game, as well as attempting to replace at least a respectable portion of the 104 yards he was averaging on the ground through the team’s first five games.
And if the Mocs decide they’d prefer to pass it more than ask Richardre Bagley and Alex Trotter to attempt to duplicate Craine’s extraordinary work, does that put extra pressure on a UTC defense that’s gone from facing a run-driven, option attack in last weekend’s loss to The Citadel to this Saturday’s matchup with the pass-happy Keydets, given the extra snaps such a strategy might force the defenders to play?
“It’s going to have to be a group effort,” coach Russ Huesman said of replacing Craine if he indeed can’t go against VMI.
Asked how much his absence may have impacted the 22-14 loss to the Citadel, Huesman sounded as if he thought the effect might have been almost as much mental as physical.
“Maybe (they were thinking) if Derrick’s not out there, who’s going to be the guy?” Huesman said. “But you can’t predict what might have happened. Even Derrick wasn’t getting that many yards against them, though we were all hoping that would change in the second half.”
Instead, Craine was out of the game for good before the third quarter closed, returning to the sideline late with the aid of crutches.
Already trailing, UTC never could grab the lead, which meant it lost for the first time in seven games, its 6-1 record (4-1 in SoCon play) dropping the Mocs to eighth in the coaches’ FCS poll and 11th in the STATS poll.
Not surprisingly, Huesman dismissed the notion that the FCS playoff selection committee pays much attention to those rankings.
“I question whether they look at those rankings in the committee room,” he said. “We were ranked eighth last year going into the playoffs and we didn’t get a bye.”
Last year is not this year, of course. Three SoCon teams currently reside in both polls: The Citadel (fifth in STATS, sixth in coaches), UTC and Samford (20th in coaches, 21st in STATS). It suddenly seems possible that the Mocs could wind up with two league losses, as well as a road loss at Alabama, and still make a strong case to make the 24-team field.
But that doesn’t mean Mocs Nation can’t help by putting 12,000 or more in Finley Stadium to watch what still appears to be the best UTC football team of the past 30 years. Especially with Tennessee and Georgia both enjoying off weeks and Alabama not kicking off against Texas A&M until more than 90 minutes after the Mocs.
Said senior defensive end Keionta Davis of the scheduled 2 p.m. kick: “I always expect a great crowd. Our fans do a great job of of coming to the game.”
Added Huesman: “We’d love a great crowd. Our guys feed off our fans’ energy. But I haven’t given it a lot of thought at this point. I can barely coach, much less worry about marketing or attendance.”
He’s being unnecessarily humble, of course. The man has coached his alma mater to a sustained success not witnessed at UTC since Huesman was playing for Joe Morrison, then Bill Oliver at the dawn of the 1980s. From 1977 through 1981, the Mocs went 40-12-3, including a 9-1-1 mark in 1977 and a 9-2 record in 1979.
Conversely, beginning with the 2013 season, when UTC won a share of the SoCon title, Huesman has guided UTC to a 33-13 overall record and a 23-4 mark in league play midway through this season.
Yet ever the perfectionist, Huesman felt he could have done more as a coach to slow The Citadel’s punishing rushing attack.
“I spend a lot of time with the defensive guys,” he said. “I don’t know if we put our guys in the best position to win. They really hurt us early with the quick pitch into the boundary. We had not seen it (on film), nor had we practiced it against it.”
This week finds the Mocs practicing against VMI’s passing, which currently ranks second to Samford in league games with an average of 278.3 yards through the air. Given that the Mocs stand second in pass defense, this could be interesting.
But as UTC attempts to bounce back from its first loss of the year, what will be most interesting is how the offense, and the team overall, adapts to the expected absence of Craine.
For as Huesman said with a bit of a sigh on Tuesday, “Our team leans on him pretty good.”
And preferrably for far more than encouragement from the sideline.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.