The Other Side of the Wall: Western Kentucky
We go from a conference foe to a former conference foe. Troy has much more history with the Tops, and a much better head-to-head record too.
| Team | Western Kentucky |
|---|---|
| Time, Network | 11 am, ESPNU |
| 2022 Record | 9-5 (6-2) |
| Troy’s Record | 10-2-1 |
| Last Matchup | W, 34-27 |
| Preseason Conf. Rank | 1st CUSA |
| FPI Rank | 91* |
| FPI Win% (Troy) | 56.5% |
| Spread | Troy -3.5 |
It’s the first time in 11 years that Western has played in the Vet. That was also the last time the Tops beat Troy—it’s their only win in Pike County in five tries.
Well, Pike County, Alabama, anyway.
The very first thing that should be mentioned about this WKU team is Austin Reed. He’s thrown for basically 800 yards, 7 touchdowns and just one interception.
West Florida’s championship quarterback is West Kentucky’s offense.
He’s thrown for more than twice as many yards as the entire team has rushing… before you take away the lost yardage. He’s third on the team in rushing too, but it’s worth asking how many were designed runs.
Reed has 120 passing attempts, and the Tops have run the ball 81 times. That’s basically two runs for every three passes. For comparison, Troy has run the ball 89 times and thrown it just 106.
But that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Last year, WKU ran the ball 29 times and passed it 57—one rush for two passes.
That plays well against Troy’s defense, as the Trojans have given up an average of 200 yards to FBS opponents so far. They also gave up 406 yards passing to the Toppers last year.
Unlike last year, gone are Kye Robichaux, Michael Matheson (more on that later) and Daewood Davis… 50 of the team’s 64 yards rushing and 282 of the Tops’ 406 yards receiving in last year’s game.
This year, Davion Ervin-Poindexter and Malachi Corley are the main weapons, leading the team in rushing and catching. Three other Tops have more than a hundred yards receiving too: Easton Messer, Blue Smith and Dalvin Smith.
A similar situation exists on the Top’s defense (and Troy’s, for that matter.) The big names are gone, but a lot of the returning guys have stepped up to fill that gap.
I’ll let our guest expand on the name game in a moment.
The Tops have given up at least 22 points each game, and more than 300 yards in a single category to FBS opponents (USF rushing, Ohio State passing). I consider last week’s thrashing at Ohio State an outlier too, but the Tops gave up 200 yards rushing to them and 150 to Houston Christian (nee Baptist).
The offensive strategy should be: give Kimani Vidal the ball as often as possible. The stat sheet should look very good for Troy either way, but that’s the first key to a Troy win—a strong run game.
That said, Western Kentucky has at least one interception and one fumble recovery each game so far. Troy has thrown an interception each game, and is averaging a fumble lost each game, thanks to a 3-fumble meltdown in week one to SFA.
On the other hand, Ohio State had two fumbles and two picks against WKU. Troy has two picks all season.
That’s the second key: Troy’s defense has to help win the turnover battle. It can’t just be the offense hanging onto the football. A good pitcher can only prevent runs; they can’t score from the mound.
It seems that a lot of this feels repetitive, whether it’s the same keys to victory from each game this season or the same teams meeting on the field again. Does anything stand out? Is there anything that makes this game feel different?
Like last year, I reached out to Fletcher Keel at The Towel Rack for a look at this year’s Tops.
What does the warning label for this team say?
WARNING: COULD TAKE TIME TO TAKE EFFECT. You know how when you pop a Benadryl and you’re expecting instant relief but it takes a couple of hours and, in that time, you’ve forgotten you’ve taken it so you get all drowsy all of a sudden and can’t remember why?
That’s kind of been the early-season story for WKU. Despite having scored 53 and 41 points, respectively, I don’t think the offense is as explosive as we were expecting it to be. The season is still young, and there’s still plenty of time for that to be a minor footnote in the story of this year, but expectations for what the offense could do were high with WKU returning it’s quarterback and top wide receiver from last year, though there have been some injury concerns (more on that below).
Troy is in the same boat. When is thing supposed to kick in again?
What Taylor Swift song title best describes the Tops’ expectations this year? Why?
Back to December. The Hilltoppers are overwhelming CUSA favorites and, especially with the likes of UTSA, UAB and insert your 3rd dark horse team here gone to the AAC, there is a “CUSA Title Game or Bust” mentality among the Topper faithful, and rightfully so.
WKU was in line to rematch with UTSA in last year’s championship game, but laid an egg at home against North Texas that ended up costing them the spot. This year, 9 wins and a bowl, while nice, will simply not do it.
I think Troy fans have started sinking back to reality too, but just a little. Like you said earlier, there’s still time in the season.
Which Avenger is most like Coach Helton?
Peacemaker. He’s an Avenger, right?
No, but I’m not arguing with John Cena.
I’m not an MCU guy at all, so I don’t have an answer for you.
Luckily, we do have some MCU-Heads on staff at The Towel Rack, so I reached out to them. Here are their takes:
- Devin Stewart, RedOUT Podcast Host: I would say Coach Helton is like Hawkeye, sniping transfers out of the portal.
- Alex Sherfield, staff writer and social media: Helton is Dr. Strange, very charismatic while carving up defenses with the corvette offense.
I get what you’re doing with Bowling Green and the Corvette factory, but the spread offense feels more like a rally car or drifting. To each his own.
What game from last year stands out most to fans? Why?
Am I allowed to cheat and go with two?
Sure, why not? I’m not cutting your answers down.
It has to be either the 73-0 dismantling of FIU at home (the game that immediately preceded last year’s WKU/Troy contest) or the New Orleans Bowl thrashing of South Alabama (a 44-23 WKU win that wasn’t as close as that final score).
The FIU win is a bit obvious – WKU looked about as bad as you could last week against Ohio State and still didn’t get 70 hung on them (though it came close).
The win against South Al is memorable for a host of reasons: The sheer force in which the WKU offense came out with, how good Austin Reed looked (kind of the breakout game we had been waiting most of the year for) and, maybe the biggest reason, it was a nice way to let off some steam against one of the best teams from the conference that didn’t even sniff around WKU in the 2021 round of realignment.
I know which one of those I’d go with.
What game are fans looking forward to most? Why?
One of those happened last week, the aforementioned trip to Ohio State, though I think more WKU fans were excited about the chance to go to Columbus than were looking forward to the actual game itself.
Again, I’m going to cheat, but I’d say if you surveyed WKU fans, they’d say either this week’s game vs. Troy or the Oct. 24 matchup against Liberty.
WKU fans would love to exact revenge against the Trojans after their win last year, and see Troy as a good barometer for where the Tops are in terms of how competitive they could be across the rest of the G5. Liberty is less so, but they’re the preseason best-chance contenders to WKU’s unanimous conference favorite status, and they look every bit the part to open the season.
I’m not sure where Troy actually stands anymore, but I absolutely understand wanting revenge.
What are three names on defense Troy fans should pay attention to? Why?
- JaQues Evans, LB: The man they call ‘Donut’. He enters Saturday second on the team in tackles, with 14 total, from the second level and has two fumble recoveries as well as a fumble returned for a touchdown, which came in the season opener against USF.
- Hosea Wheeler, DT: Wheeler was the defensive standout last week against the Buckeyes, recording a sack, recovering a fumble and picking off a pass at the line of scrimmage. I’m interested in seeing what his follow up performance will contain.
- Upton Stout, DB: Troy fans might remember names such as Kahlef Hailassie or A.J. Brathwaite from last year’s meeting. Both of them have left the program – the former to the NFL, the latter to Arkansas before leaving during fall camp – and Upton Stout has taken their spot as the no-doubt top cornerback.
When Western snaps the ball, what is most likely to happen?
As discussed in the first answer, the expectation coming into the year was we’d be seeing deep shots galore and a ton of quick-strike scores. That…hasn’t really been the case. What we have seen so far is a much more restrained offense from a play calling perspective, mostly with short and intermediate routes, letting wide receivers use their athleticism with the ball. However, I do think some of that is due to injuries – last week vs. OSU was the first time Corley really logged meaningful downs, after exiting the season opener following the second series of the game and WKU’s preseason WR2 and WR3 (Dalvin Smith and Michael Mathison) are both injured as well (Smith suffered an injury against USF, Mathison in fall camp). But, with Corley back, he’ll be used either on bubble screens so the YAC King can get back to work or he’ll be sent deep down the sideline for big-chunk plays.
You’ll also see a running game that’s struggling to find its footing, with a committee featuring three or four guys.
If things get dire enough, say it’s 14-3, Troy, in the middle of the second quarter, you’ll see Austin Reed turn into game takeover mode, where he’ll just say “I’ll do it my dang self” and pick up first downs with his legs and try to will something to start going right. I don’t think we’ll see that, but I also didn’t think the Tops would lose by 53 points last week.
If we wake up Sunday and the underdog wins, what happened the day before?
As of writing, this game is just beyond “toss-up” territory, with Troy being 3.5 point favorites at home.
So, if we wake up to a WKU win on Sunday, it’ll mean Reed and Corley dominated, with over 350 yards passing for the former and at least 100 yards receiving and multiple scores for the latter. It’ll also mean WKU’s defense bent but never broke – they might have difficulty keeping Vidal in check (the run defense against USF and HCU was abysmal, though they did a decent job of keeping OSU in check until the game became a blowout) but they’ll have come up with a key turnover or two and have gotten pressure to Watson late in the game.
Full disclosure: I didn’t read these answers until after I typed the first half of the preview. I swear.
What chicken joint is most associated with the team, college, fanbase or city? If not chicken, BBQ?
Any WKU fans reading this can yell at me if I’m overlooking something, but I don’t really think there’s a chicken joint that fits your criteria. I could say Chick-Fil-A, because it’s on campus and Lord knows I used a majority of my meal swipes there as a student, but what’s the fun in that?!
I’ll be only slightly less boring and default to when you asked us about the go-to BBQ spot last time and say Smokey Pig as Bowling Green’s best place for BBQ. Sorry to be lame.
Hey, there is nothing lame about barbecue.
What’s one question you have for us about Troy, if you have one (we’ll answer in the article)?
As discussed previously, Troy is the favorite – if only slightly – heading into the game. What is the overall vibe/feel about this game from the Trojan perspective?
Three words: figure it out. This is the second game in a row that’s a tossup, though JMU is expected to be a better team than WKU, and Troy performed better than the final score indicates. Still, Troy hasn’t scored more than 14 points against an FBS team yet. The defense is good, but the offense is struggling.
There are a ton of positives for Troy in this game: the potential for another big game by Kimani, the secondary’s chance to shut down one of the best quarterbacks in the country, and an opportunity to prove this team has grown from last year and the weeks before.
This offense looks a lot like the team Troy saw last year: short spread passes, a consistent deep threat and a quarterback who manages the game well. The only real difference is the names on the back of the jerseys.
This defense is weaker than the last two Troy faced but can this offense figure out how to be effective?
Last year was a tossup that Troy won. This year is a coin flip too.
Troy wins, 28-24.
Special thanks to Fletcher and the guys at The Towel Rack. Give them a follow on Twitter.