Lamar @ SELA

[dbackjon]

Should be a good test of both teams.

Lamar is fresh off a shootout win at Sam. SELA hasn't had a major FCS test yet, beating NW State and Florida Tech (DII) while losing to O-HI-O

[Gil Dobie]

Lamar by 12

[JohnStOnge]

I thought about starting a separate thread to let people know you can watch this on line Thursday night but what the heck I'll do it here. It's on American Sports Network so if you get that you can just watch it on TV. That's what I'll be doing. But if not you can watch it on line at http://southland.org/watch/?Live=218" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

Lamar is fun to watch on offense and Southeastern Louisiana has a bunch of mercenaries on defense. Southeastern has even more mercenaries than Sam Houston State does. Southeastern is big on defense. Real big for a FCS team. Lamar rushed for 328 yards at 8 yard per carry on Sam Houston State's mercenaries. Also rushed for a respectable 173 yards at a respectable 4 yards per carry on Baylor.

Should be interesting.

[slulionsfan]

I thought about starting a separate thread to let people know you can watch this on line Thursday night but what the heck I'll do it here. It's on American Sports Network so if you get that you can just watch it on TV. That's what I'll be doing. But if not you can watch it on line at http://southland.org/watch/?Live=218" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

Lamar is fun to watch on offense and Southeastern Louisiana has a bunch of mercenaries on defense. Southeastern has even more mercenaries than Sam Houston State does. Southeastern is big on defense. Real big for a FCS team. Lamar rushed for 328 yards at 8 yard per carry on Sam Houston State's mercenaries. Also rushed for a respectable 173 yards at a respectable 4 yards per carry on Baylor.

Should be interesting.

WTF are you talking about? We don't have mercenaries. You're an idiot.

[JohnStOnge]

WTF are you talking about? We don't have mercenaries. You're an idiot.

Oh OK you can say they have a bunch of transfers and JC signees. Like for instance 8 of the 11 starters on their depth chart for the Lamar game including all three defensive linemen being JC transfers and three of the five members of the secondary being FBS transfers. And yeah I know we've talked in the past about how who their starters are doesn't mean anything but a while back when I looked at their roster they had more than 40 players that were transfers or JC signees. Also I have no doubt that if I go through their depth chart it'll be dominated by transfers and JC transfers.

Sam Houston State also now relies heavily on transfers and JC signees and when I looked a while back for the purpose of seeing which school had more such players on their roster the BearKats had somewhere in the 30s.

[JohnStOnge]

On the "big on defense" part:

Their 3 defensive line starters are 320, 320, and 270.
Their 3 linebacker starters are 225, 225, and 235.
Their 5 starters in the secondary are 180, 185, 188, 200, and 200.

That's big for a FCS defense.

[kalm]

WTF are you talking about? We don't have mercenaries. You're an idiot.

Oh OK you can say they have a bunch of transfers and JC signees. Like for instance 8 of the 11 starters on their depth chart for the Lamar game including all three defensive linemen being JC transfers and three of the five members of the secondary being FBS transfers. And yeah I know we've talked in the past about how who their starters are doesn't mean anything but a while back when I looked at their roster they had more than 40 players that were transfers or JC signees. Also I have no doubt that if I go through their depth chart it'll be dominated by transfers and JC transfers.

Sam Houston State also now relies heavily on transfers and JC signees and when I looked a while back for the purpose of seeing which school had more such players on their roster the BearKats had somewhere in the 30s.

Bringing in a bunch of transfers either means you're desperately rebuilding or you suck at developing talent.

Mercenaries is an appropriate term here.

[JohnStOnge]

I don't know if "mercenaries" is appropriate. That's kind of a razz joke. But it's clear that at least for now Southeastern Louisiana's strategy is NOT one that involves being patient, recruiting players out of high school, and developing them while maybe bringing in a sprinkling of transfers to shore up key positions. They are clearly "all in" on bringing in JCs and FBS transfers for immediate impact to fill out most of their "playing time" positions.

For my lunch activity I went ahead and looked at the whole depth chart for the Lamar game. 75 % of the "number 1s" on the offense/defense depth chart (18 of 24) are either JC signees (9) or FBS transfers (9). 60% (29 of 48) of all the players that show up on the depth chart are (18 JC signees, 11 FBS transfers).

I've seen no indication so far that the system is changing. They appear to be committed to it. KC Keeler's got nothing on Ron Roberts when it comes to that kind of strategy.

But it obviously works for them. They obviously started fielding better football teams after they went to that approach.

[JohnStOnge]

So far Lamar has not even been really trying to run the ball. Interesting.

[JohnStOnge]

That was a great game with lots of drama. Southeastern's winning TD came on a 4th and goal from the 1 play where the guy was stopped but fell on top of a Lamar player so that he wasn't down then he pushed himself across the goal line.

My biggest takeaway is that, unfortunately from my standpoint, Southeastern Louisiana was way more effective throwing the football against Lamar than it was when I watched them play Northwestern State to open the season; and that's even though the same Southeastern receiver dropped two long sure touchdowns on what were apparently blown coverages. The big thing is that both times the quarterback threw it perfectly and hit him right in the hands in stride.

Lamar's Kade Herrington was again a bright spot for the Cardinals. In fact I came away thinking that if I'm Lamar I'm giving him more touches than he got. He had 152 yards rushing on 20 carries plus another 47 yards on two receptions. That's 9 yards per touch and you could once again see that he's a big play waiting to happen and also makes something out of nothing on a routine basis. I know he's smallish but I'd ride that horse. I'll be surprised if by the end of the year when I've had a chance to see more players I don't think he's the best offensive player in the conference. He's just got "it."