Game Preview #1: St. Francis (PA)

HELL YEAH!  Football is back and we can only assume from the uptick in comments this week here and over @JMUSportsblog that you all agree this is the best time of the year.  While we all wish men’s hoops mattered, it’s become even more painful to cover Brady’s Bunch than slogging through the summer the last couple years.  But it’s a Presidential Election year, which means Mickey Matthews’ team is primed for big things (’04 Champs, ’08 Semi-Finalists, ’12 ???).  Also, that’s the last mention you’ll hear of hoops in a football column this season.  We don’t want whatever plagues basketball to spread from the Convo under the tunnel and into Bridgeforth.

The Dukes are stacked this year!  The talent was there a year ago, but there were all kinds of questions about leadership, experience, and off-field distractions when the season started.  No such issues this year.

Ahhh, August tailgaiting!

As always, we’ll be previewing the matchup each Friday, usually with a little bit of serious X’s and O’s talk we either stole from others or pulled out of our asses and a lot of good-natured ribbing of the opposition and their fans (except for ODU of course where the ribbing will be vitriolic, bitter, and dismissive).  This week though, it’s really tough to find anything to get ornery about mainly because it’s really tough to find anyone who will get riled up about St. Francis.  Therefore, we’ll just skip straight ahead to bashing West Virginia fans and hope the JMU players don’t skip ahead like us.

The Basics

St. Francis is called the Red Flash.  Yes, that’s Flash, not Flashes.  They are from what appears to be a beautiful town on top of a mountain called Loretto, PA.  That town is likely just a small outpost where people talk about how you should’ve seen it when the mine was working.  St. Francis is one of the smallest schools in Division 1 athletics and someday they’ll probably make a great story for March Madness.  But limited scholarship FCS participation in the NEC is a tough way to go (ask URI) and they were terrible last year and are likely to be terrible this year.  This is not CCSU from last year.  Last year, we assumed a blowout was inevitable and were sorely disappointed when the Dukes opened New Bridgeforth in underwhelming style.  This year, a blowout is inevitable.  Wait – what, you mean St. Francis beat CCSU last year after we barely scored on them?!  Nahhh, forget that.  This team is terrible.  If you want a more thorough examination, you’ll have to go over to JMU Sports.

Beer of the Week

Back by popular demand (or because we love this item), Beer of the Week returns in style.  First, don’t bring Pumpkin anything.  At all. It’s played out, most all of it is garbage, and it’s not even Labor Day yet.  It’s not cool, it’s just an excuse to throw orange labels on things and make it stand out in the market.  And it’s crowding out all of the old fall seasonals and Octoberfests that used to be good, really leaving us with only three seasons worth of quarterly beers.   Just stop.

Second, find somewhere selling beer from the Boulevard Brewing Company in Kansas City.  Slowly working your way through their catalog will bring great happiness, but we’re kicking off this year with Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale from their Smokestack Series.  It’s a ridiculously good saison that is easier to just enjoy than to explain.  This sounds stupid I know, but it’s also one of the most beautiful bottle/label combos you’ll see on a beer anywhere.

Lastly, don’t forget to check out the Saturday Blitz, a great national college football site that also happens to treat FCS with the respect we all think it deserves.  We’re contributing all season to the FCS roundtable and we got lead billing in the column this week.  (Thanks Kyle!)

Prediction

Nothing to see here, Dukes 45, Red Flash 7.  That said, we hope to see consistent, solid play from Thorpe, a few flashes from QB2 Birdsong later, and solid play along the lines.  The seven-on-seven players are great for JMU this year, but we need good health on the O-Line and to find a pass-rush on the D-Line before we get to CAA play.  This team’s season will be determined by those two things.  Lastly, really looking forward to seeing if Maryland transfer Titus Till can provide a spark in the return game and save DQ Scott from having to do so much this year.