Opponent Preview: Abilene Christian
9/25/2015 12:00:00 AM | Football
SFA Game Notes at Abilene Christian 
NACOGDOCHES, Texas - Stephen F. Austin heads to Abilene this weekend seeking its first Southland Conference victory of the season, kicking off at 11 a.m. Saturday, September 26. SFA is 0-3 on the year while the Wildcats are 1-1, coming off a 49-21 victory over Houston Baptist last weekend.
The trip to Abilene will be the first for SFA since 1984 when the Lumberjack and Wildcats were Lone Star Conference rivals before SFA made the jump to Division I. ACU leads the all-time series 9-6, including a 37-35 win in Nacogdoches last season, but the 'Jacks won the last game in Abilene, defeating the 'Cats 37-21.
Saturday's game will be broadcast live on American Sports Network as the company and the Southland Conference are in the first year of a new agreement. The game will be broadcast live on KLPN (MyTV) out of Tyler/Longview, which is channel 9 and 109 on Suddenlink Tyler, channel 133 on Suddenlink Nacogdoches and channels 47.1 and 51.2 over the air.
COZI-TV out of Dallas-Fort Worth has also agreed to pick up the game, giving DFW area Lumberjacks multiple options to watch the game. It will broadcast over the air on channel 5.2 with affiliates on Time Warner Cable (ch. 1245), Charter (ch. 188), Verizon Fios (ch. 460), Grande (ch. 280), One Source (ch. 801), GEUS (ch. 126) and Suddenlink (ch. 128).
Other ASN affiliates are available throughout the state of Texas and can be found at Southland.org/ASN. For those that are unable to catch the game on television, it will stream live on the Southland Digital Network, available at Southland.org/Watch or through the Southland Conference app.
Saturday's game is also the third P4X Foundation Classic highlighting Childhood Cancer Awareness Day. The foundation was established following the passing of Rex Fleming, son of ACU associate director of athletics for media relations Lance Fleming and his wife, Jill. Rex passed away in November 2012 after a two-year battle against brain cancer.
Since the foundation was created in January 2013, it has raised more than $100,000 and has given away a large portion of those dollars. The foundation has provided at least 40 iPod Touches / iPad Minis and Apple iTunes gift cards to pediatric cancer patients at Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth, as well as Hendrick Medical Center in Abilene.
The foundation has also made donations of $25,000 (Hendrick Hospice) and $20,000 (West Texas Rehabilitation Center). Both SFA and ACU will be wearing helmet stickers in recognition of the event and Saturday's winning team will be presented with a trophy. Members of the ACU men's basketball team will be at the exits in the fourth quarter to collect donations for the P4X Foundation as fans are leaving. For more information on the foundation, visit p4xfoundation.com.
Head Coach Clint Conque's Press Conference Transcript
Recapping the McNeese State game:
"It was a typical McNeese football team. They were very fundamentally sound for the most part. I thought we played really hard, I thought we gave a competitive effort. Certainly had some opportunities. The elephant in the room is the 14-point swing. We got the ball inside the one after an overturn of a touchdown call and instead of us going up seven, we cough it up on the goal line and they go up seven at the other end. But I was really proud of our football team of how we responded back to take a 14-7 lead. The wheels didn’t come off after a huge momentum swing in the game and to give McNeese some credit, they made a couple of adjustments at their front to contain our run game. They played a lot of really tight man coverage for the most part. I was pleased offensively that we were able to get some bigger plays had a couple of nice long runs and took advantage of a mistake they made in the secondary and hit a big play. We had a couple drops that hurt us. I think the other thing that probably hurt us on offense was that we had a couple of early down penalties. We had false starts on first down, a holding call on an early down and right now we aren’t built to overcome some of those negative things that happened on early downs. I thought the kicking game was solid. Nick Bruno had another big night for us. He's obviously getting to play way too much but he’s certainly responding for his team. I was really proud of Hunter Taylor making his first colligate start. I thought the guys around him really responded and did some good things. Defensively, they only had about 300 yards of offense until the long run. I thought we did a good job of containing (Daniel) Sams for the most part. He’s an electric and elusive athlete and I’m glad he’s a senior. But our kids kept on clawing and scratching and it was a very competitive effort. We gave ourselves a chance but unfortunately we made too many mistakes and not enough plays and came up short."
On the SFA injury situation:
"Zach (Conque) should be good to go this weekend. He got cleared and took a few snaps on Thursday. Hunter (Taylor) had a pretty good week of practice so he deserved the opportunity to start and did a good job. We really had no intentions of short yardage things with Zach, but he was available to play. We got to the fourth quarter with about 10 minutes to go, we were still down by one score just looking for a spark and it was probably a little unfair to put him in that situation without having a lot of reps in practice last week. As far as the kicking game, we still aren't sure yet. (Nick) Bruno will kick for us again this weekend. We've got a few guys we're just monitoring day-to-day."
On the bright spots through three games:
"I think our kicking game has been pretty solid. I feel like we are gaining some confidence on the defensive side of the football. We had a redshirt freshman make his first career start on Saturday, (Tarrin Mitchell) who came up with two interceptions and that was very positive. I do think we are gaining some confidence over there and trying to find a rhythm. Offensively we’re just not very consistent right now and we’re trying some different combinations at receiver. Frankly our offensive line didn’t play as well as we hoped they would have Saturday from an assignment stand point and some other technical things. We’re still trying to find a rhythm. We’ve seen a spark and we feel like we’ve got three quality backs in this league and we’ve seen all of them have big plays out of the back field. Joshawa (West) certainly has given us some plays in the past game as well so we want to push the ball down the field a little bit more, but to do that we’ve got to make sure we are protected up and creating some separation, and that’s been a little bit of a problem."
On Abilene Christian:
"They’ve held serve about how you think it would go. They were very competitive against Fresno State, an FBS opponent, and then pulled away in the second half against Houston Baptist. They've got two good running backs and two really good quarterbacks. They’ve got a redshirt freshman (Dallas Sealy) that’s more of a dual threat kind of guy and Parker McKenzie is obviously an established player. They’ve got a big offensive line, and those two little backs get in there and wall up on folks. They’re physical and create some seams which hurt us last year, especially De'Andre Brown who ran for over 250 yards against us. Defensively we feel like their front may be a little better this year - a little more physical and bigger than what they were last year. Their middle linebacker (Sam Denmark) is an outstanding player. They’ve rebuilt their skill positions with transfers with both junior college and four-year transfers in the secondary and quite a few at receiver. They’re pretty athletic on the perimeter and big and physical. They’re going to keep the pressure on you. That’s what they did last year and they’ll do the same thing this year. Their defensive coordinator hasn’t met a blitz that he doesn’t like and so I’m certain they are going to be active and we will have to prepare for that."
On the relationship with ACU head coach Ken Collums:
"Ken and I go way back and he is one of my closest friends. He was on my staff for five years at Central Arkansas when I took over the job, spending time as my offensive coordinator. He taught me a lot about having patience as he is very wise beyond his years. He is a former quarterback, so that poise and focus has been engrained into him for a long time. But he is a very smart football coach and has been a family friend for years. He also played a big role in Zach transferring to SFA, sharing his experience about losing his father while he was on my staff. But he is a great friend and a tremendous football coach. And he taught me how to fly fish, so I'm very thankful to him for that."
-SFA-
