Three Things (Plus One) From The Sun Belt Week Five
The fifth week of Sun Belt action had a little bit of everything. A league defensive battle, a league offensive battle, non-conference blowouts each way, a non-conference shocker and a title contender showing their class.
There’s a lot to choose from, but here’s three things (plus one) from the first October weekend of #FunBelt action.
South Alabama doesn’t make sense
The below video describes South Alabama Football.
This team does not make sense. Beats Mississippi State on the road to start the season, loses easily to Georgia Southern, loses at Louisiana (more on them later), then barely beats FCS Nicholls State and hosting #19 San Diego State who had New Years Bowl aspirations, scored 21 unanswered in the fourth quarter to upset the Aztecs 42-24.
Granted, the Jaguars were fortunate in both their big wins. The Bulldogs missed a chip-shot field goal at the horn and SDSU imploded with a botched punt and an 80-yard fumble return to ice the game.
Joey Jones’ side has now knocked off the Aztecs for the second straight season and their reward is a bye week before heading to Arkansas State on Saturday, October 15th, hoping to improve on their 0-2 league record.
App State and Troy find ways to win
They weren’t pretty, but the Mountaineers and Trojans found ways to win their Sun Belt games on Saturday.
App State overcame a defensive struggle against Georgia State to squeeze out a 17-3 victory after being scoreless at halftime. The Trojans did better at Idaho, but had to overcome an early turnover and narrowly avoided going down two scores to take a 34-13 victory. These come after much different games the week before where App State won an offensive shootout 45-38 over Akron and Troy used turnovers despite being out-gained to beat New Mexico State 52-6.
The jury is out on Georgia Southern and the jury is drunk dealing with South Alabama, but we know that Troy and App State are in the top tier of the league. The Trojans are 4-1 and 2-0 in the league and have their bye week before hosting Georgia State on Saturday, October 15th. App State also has a bye this week, but returns on Wednesday, October 12th at Louisiana.
Louisiana hates overtimes
The Cajuns have now played a combined six overtimes in their last two games and have zero wins to show for it.
After a 41-39 four-overtime defeat last week at Tulane despite the Green Wave going 0-17 on third down, the Cajuns found themselves in a double-overtime thriller in Las Cruces Saturday night.
The game shouldn’t have gone to overtime as NMSU missed a chip-shot to win at the end of regulation. After trading touchdowns to start overtime, Louisiana missed a chip shot of their own before Larry Rose III won the game by fumbling into the end zone. Funny world.
Now 2-3 overall and 1-1 in Sun Belt play, the Cajuns have a half-bye week before returning home on Wednesday, October 12th versus App State.
Bonus: Wednesday Night #FunBelt Is Here!
This coming Wednesday sees the return of weeknight Sun Belt action to ESPN2. This year, the annual Tuesday contests are now on Wednesday night and feature battles of east at west. This Wednesday has Georgia Southern inaugural trip to Jonesboro to face Arkansas State. This game had a lot more juice before the season started as both sides are reeling. Georgia Southern (3-1, 2-0) need to win to get back on track after losing at Western Michigan and A-State (0-4) needs to win to have any bowl prayer.
The following week, as already mentioned, has App State at Louisiana. The Cajuns will be an underdog going in as App State looks to keep up in the Sun Belt race.