Conque’s Comments: SFA Travels to Abilene Christian Saturday

THE KICKOFF
The Stephen F. Austin football team will embark on its first Southland Conference road trip of the year Saturday when the Lumberjacks make the trip to Abilene, Texas, facing Abilene Christian in a 6 p.m. kickoff. It will be just SFA's second trip to Abilene since the Wildcats rejoined the Southland as NCAA Division I members in 2013. The road contest follows back-to-back home games for the 'Jacks the last two weekends.

FOLLOWING THE LUMBERJACKS
Saturday's game at Abilene Christian will be streamed live online through an internet-only broadcast, available at portal.stretchinternet.com/abilene/. Rob Meyers, the voice of the Lumberjacks, will call the game along with color commentator Kevin Langford on Q107.7 FM, available online at Q1077.com as well as through the Lumberjack Sports Network on the TuneIn app. Live stats will be available at ACUSports.com, complemented by Twitter updates from @SFA_Football.

ABOUT THE GAME
In a battle of two Southland teams that won their conference openers a week ago, Saturday night's game will be an intriguing matchup for both the 'Jacks and Wildcats. Both teams faced challenging opponents in their first two games of the season as Abilene Christian opened up with a pair of FBS games on the road, falling 38-14 at New Mexico and 38-10 at Colorado State. Meanwhile, SFA took on two very talented programs that are trending upward in SMU out of the American Athletic Conference and Southern Utah out of the Big Sky Conference. Dropping both decisions by a large margin, 58-14 at SMU and 51-14 versus Southern Utah, those two teams' only losses of the season have come against nationally ranked FBS competition.

Head Coach Clint Conque's Comments

On the biggest takeaways from the victory over Incarnate Word:
"Well, first of all it's a win. All wins are good but some are prettier than others, but it's a win. I thought the young men came out on point offensively the first quarter. Offensively, we scored three touchdowns on three of the first four drives, had big plays all over the field, we protected pretty well and got a couple run plays here and there. Foster ran one in from 19 yards. Defensively, we went out and I think we had three stops in the first quarter. Tackled well, gap integrity, gave up a play here or there, you know we got off to the kind of start like we needed to get off too."

"Let's go to the fourth quarter at the end of the game, I thought we regained our focus and played like a desperate team again. Our tackling was a little bit better, limited the big plays more and certainly driving down and getting the field goal I think was the play of the game. It brought us to a one score game and you knew there was only a possession or two left in the football game. I think that emotionally ignited our defense, they went out and made two or three stops in the fourth quarter and then we got a four-play, 70-yard drive in about 50 seconds to tie it up. Of course the (Alize) Ward interception return, we just picked up some tremendous blocks and he has some incredible running skills and that's why he's our kick returner, and preseason all-conference guy in that position."

"Now that's the good, and the bad was the second and third quarters where we lost our focus. Penalties galore, had a 60 to 70-yard play called back, would have been on the two maybe or the one. We had 30 yards in penalties. On one of their long drives we were on third-and-ten and we got roughing the passer, where we could have been off the field. We lost our poise, we lost our focus and our detail. We've just got to be mature, we got to learn that if you're up 21-0 and you got an opportunity to knock somebody out, go finish it. You let teams hang around, it's been my experience regardless who they are or what level you play, you let team hang around and you give them an opportunity to get back in it."

"Give those guys (Incarnate Word) some credit, and I think their running back was fabulous, well of course, we made him look really good with the number of tackles we missed. The kid from Iowa, he transferred from Iowa as a graduate student, is a terrific football player and they got a good one there. We had a chance in the first quarter when we dropped an interception. It hit one of our safeties right in the chest, and I mean he's looking right at it and we hope to make that play. Alize early in the game kind of tipped one and he missed it again, we would have had first-and-ten maybe inside the 15-yard line. We had an opportunity to really extend our lead in the first quarter and we didn't do that. To our young men's credit, they kept playing, they found a way to win, they found a will to go compete, and I think it shows a little bit about their spirits. Hopefully we're figuring out how to win and finish games, that's the challenge of moving forward."

"The Ward play, Alize had tremendous discipline staying back on that because he was playing the free safety position there. Excellent job on playing the ball, he picked up two or three blocks. Been doing this for a long time, I've seen games decided on a lot of different ways but not a flea-flicker pick-six. You know, somebody asked me what Coach Kennan and I talked about after the game, and I really couldn't tell you because I was kind of still in a fog of what had just happened and maybe he was too. Obviously, we've got to figure out how to put the four quarters together. If we can bookend them like we did, then we can certainly do it better in the middle and that is our hope is moving forward."

On Foster Sawyer's confidence after leading the game-tying drive against Incarnate Word:
"Well I think it gives him some confidence moving forward and you know we had a couple of drops in there. Of course, we had 60-70 yards to (Tamrick) Pace called back because of a lineman down field. Foster had a good spring, first good month of the summer and basically missed 6 or 7 weeks of the last month of the summer. Throwing, conditioning and all those things like lifting he missed and the first two and half weeks of camp. He missed about 7 weeks of working on timing and there's no substitute, regardless of your level of maturity and skill. There is no substitute to being on the field, in the fire, going into run, play-action pass, feeling the rush and working the timing out with your receivers. He missed quite a bit of that. He's an awfully skill young man, he can really throw the football. He's a little bit more athletic than what people really give him credit for because he can run and extend the play. I thought his ball security was much better on Saturday. I know we've got to do a better job on protecting him, and we need to do a better job in getting ourselves in a situation where it is not third-and-eight and we have to throw the football down the field. That means we've got to do better in our early downs. Part of the issue that we had in the third and fourth quarters, if you go back and look at our three-and-outs or four-and-outs, they happened in the third and fourth quarters. So, our defense was playing a lot of snaps and they got tired. We've got to extend drives and move the chains, score points, obviously, but change the field position. Foster I think is getting a better grasp for that and more command of what we're doing."

On improving the running game:
"Obviously, we want to run the ball better. But the other part of that too and what people kind of discount is box count. If they give you and unfair box count, we're going to throw the screens, the bubbles, the hitches, hitch screens and those kinds of things. To me, it's just our extension to our run game and we only rushed maybe for 70 yards on Saturday night, but we probably had a better 60 or 70 yards in our screen game and quick game. So, hitting the quick out, the hitch screen and the bubble, and we're trying to manufacture our run game that way because the box count may not be fair. Do we want to run the ball better when our running backs and quarterback actually have it in their hands? Absolutely. We're going to get to work on that, clean some things up that we need to on the offensive line and with our skills kids. But, just like Abilene Christian, if you look at their run average, it's not going to be around any of the national leader's either. What they do is protect their run game with an athletic quarterback and they protect their run game with all the quick screens, the line screens, tunnel screens and most spread teams will do that. Certainly, we want to be more efficient running the ball. At times, we pop the 10-20 yard runs, the 14, eight, five-yard runs. We're not doing it consistent enough but when people want to hitch you up or stack the box, then you got to be able to go play on the parameter. That's where your quick game or screen game becomes more of an extension of your run game."

-SFA-

Photo by: Hardy Meredith | SFA Photography

Conque’s Comments: SFA Travels to Abilene Christian Saturday

9/22/2017 7:06:00 AM | Football

SFA head coach Clint Conque talks about last weekend’s Southland opening win over Incarnate Word and previews Saturday’s conference road matchup with Abilene Christian

By: Luke Bolanos | Assistant Director of Athletic Media Relations