Flames look to dominate, pay back winless Blue Hose

Presbyterian has something on Liberty that no other Big South conference team does in the last three seasons. The Blue Hose have beaten the Flames.

Last year’s game in Clinton, S.C., was a non-league game, because PC was competing as an FCS independent, but nonetheless, LU coach Danny Rocco said, in the back of their minds, the Blue Hose know they can beat the Flames.

Because they have.

“The last time we played them, they beat us,” said Rocco, whose team hosts the winless Blue Hose today at 3:30 p.m. “That’s really the only identifiable memory I have.”

That memory has been plastered around the Flames’ football operations center this week, in the form of huge signs reading “31” and “28” (the score of last year’s game), and small motivational signs with words like “be physically dominant.”

And coming off a game in which the Flames were anything but physically dominant, Rocco said he believes Presbyterian has his team’s full attention, despite the fact that PC hasn’t won since beating the Flames last Nov. 1.

Of course, much has changed since that game. Former coach Bobby Bentley left Presbyterian to return to the high-school coaching ranks in Byrne, S.C. And many of the players who helped begin PC’s transition to Division I are gone. New coach Harold Nichols, a PC alum, is working with a roster that includes more than 60 freshmen and redshirt freshmen, and the results have been telling.

Presbyterian’s closest defeat was an 11-point loss last week at home to VMI, which hadn’t won a conference road game since beating Liberty in Lynchburg in 2005. The Blue Hose haven’t scored more than 21 points in a game this season and they were beaten soundly by first-year FCS program Old Dominion.

But that doesn’t mean that the Hose haven’t competed.

Rocco noted that many of Presbyterian’s games were close at halftime. In a 52-14 loss at Stony Brook, the Hose trailed 23-14 at the break. They were down 14-10 at Old Dominion and 20-14 at The Citadel before losing 46-21.

“You’ve got to be able to make crucial plays at crucial times in a game,” Nichols said. “At times this year we’ve been able to. At other times, we haven’t. As a result, we haven’t been able to secure a win.”

Nichols said Tuesday he wasn’t sure who would start at quarterback today. Sophomore Brandon Miley had an outstanding game last year against Liberty, going 21-for-29 with 301 yards, two touchdown passes, a touchdown run and an interception.

He’s struggled this season, though, throwing four touchdown passes against 12 interceptions. Late in the second quarter last week against VMI, Nichols replaced Miley with senior Tim Webb, who probably doesn’t have the fondest memories of Williams Stadium. He took a devastating hit in the 2007 game here and left with a fractured neck.

Last year’s defeat in Clinton might be the best thing to happen to this year’s Liberty squad, as it ensures that the Flames won’t be overlooking an 0-7 team. Couple that result with the offensive struggles the Flames had last week in a 20-13 win at Charleston Southern, and No. 23 Liberty (5-2, 2-0 Big South) has plenty of motivation to extend its Big South record win streak to 14 games.

“This is a game against a football team that beat us last year,” Rocco said. “That, in and of itself, is enough motivation for our football team to be ready and play at a very high level.”