Adam MacDonald
The Valdosta Daily Times
VALDOSTA —
VALDOSTA — Valdosta State played one of its most thrilling season openers in its 29-year history last Saturday, when it beat Wingate 25-22 with a field goal as time expired.
Now it’s time to move on.
The Blazers will make their first road trip of the season on Saturday, when they travel to Newberry, S.C. to face the Newberry Wolves.
Moving on is a tough task, though. So much happened — good and bad — during the Wingate game that there’s still a buzz amongst the fans and community.
Head coach David Dean and a few of the players said they put the game to bed after reviewing film of it on Sunday. However, Dean said it was not easy.
“It’s hard when you win a big game like that to get past it,” Dean said. “That’s why college football is so tough, and the playoffs are so tough. You have a big win, and emotionally you have to put that behind you and start focusing on the next week. That’s not easy to do.”
One thing that is helping the Blazers is their senior leadership. All five captains are seniors, and the coaches have let them police the players.
“I know once Wingate was over and we got together Sunday, it was over,” defensive tackle Demario Jones said. “It’s time to get our mind refocused. The one good thing that our seniors are doing is it’s not taking coaches to remind the younger guys that this is a new week, a new team.”
Another reason the Blazers are trying to get past Wingate is because Dean and Jones agree that Newberry is a better team. The Wolves went 6-4 last year, but beat the Blazers 31-24 in the first game of the season at Bazemore-Hyder Stadium. They lost several key skill players on offense, but return four of their starting five offensive linemen and an All-American safety on defense in Ron Parker, who made 10 tackles in last year’s game.
“After the game, and the way they won and celebrated, you could tell that was a big game and win for them,” Dean said. “That was (Newberry coach Todd Knight’s) first game as head coach, so they obviously wanted to win, and there was a lot of emotion. We accept that. It was a big win for them. Hopefully, if we go up and win, it’s going to be a big win for us, just like every one of them is going to be.”
Newberry cruised to a 55-0 win over Livingstone in its opener last week. The Wolves scored touchdowns on their first five offensive series, and Dean said they didn’t reveal too much of what they plan to do against VSU. There was no need to.
“Wingate and Newberry are similar in some ways, but Newberry is a much better football team,” Jones said.
Jones said that on film, Newberry appears to have a lot of confidence in what it’s doing, has a lot of speed and gets the ball in the hands of its playmakers.
“The biggest thing you see on film is they’re playing together,” Jones said. “Any time you do that, you have a chance.”
Back at VSU, there is one major question lingering heading into the latter part of the week. Dean has yet to name a starting quarterback. It will either be last week’s starter, Jimmy Coy, or the freshman who led the team’s game-winning drive against Wingate, Brett Whitmire.
“We’re still evaluating that,” Dean said. “We’ve got stuff in our game plan that they both do very well, so right now, we’re just going to evaluate it. We’ll go back and watch the film from (Tuesday’s) practice, evaluate it and make a decision after (Wednesday’s) practice of who’s going to start. When we go through our scripted stuff on Thursday and Friday, the starting quarterback is there and running it, and making all the calls.”
It might seem that the obvious choice would be Whitmire, but Dean was not disappointed with Coy’s performance. Several of his passes were dropped, including one that would have been a touchdown.
“Although he wasn’t in at the end of the game, (the players) know he played well,” Dean said. “Our guys know they didn’t help him very much with some dropped balls and bad routes and different things like that. They know it’s not on Jimmy Coy, it’s a team effort. They’re going to rally around whoever we put out there.”
VSU and Newberry kick off at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday.
