LU looks to put Charleston Southern away early

This week’s inspirational message at Liberty’s football operations center: “Leave nothing to chance.”

It’s plastered all over the walls on sheets of white copy paper, accompanied by Charleston Southern logos. The point is to remind Liberty’s players that they essentially hold the key to the rest of their season. The Flames have been the dominant team in the Big South since 2006, winning 12 straight league games.

Liberty has outscored today’s opponent, Charleston Southern, 72-0 in the last three halves between the two teams and 92-10 overall.

But LU coach Danny Rocco doesn’t want anyone on his team believing that Charleston Southern isn’t capable of winning today’s game. It happens in college football all the time — a team with inferior talent sneaks up and beats a team it shouldn’t. Call it the one out of 10 theory.

Thus the motto: “Leave nothing to chance.”

“We’re the team the beat, and we can only beat ourselves,” LU tailback Aldreakis Allen said. “We’ve got to take every team seriously. We’ve got to go out and play our game and be alert to everything.”

One player the Flames (4-2, 1-0 Big South) will be aware of is Charleston Southern’s Gerald Stevenson — position omitted because he’s a hard man to pin down.

He’s listed as a receiver on the depth chart, but he leads the Bucs (2-4, 0-1) in rushing and receiving yardage and is one of the more dangerous kick returners in the conference.

CSU coach Jay Mills’ plan for Stevenson is simple: Get the ball in the junior’s hands.

“We’ve tried to be as creative as we can,” Mills said. “He’s just an outstanding football player. If we can throw it to him, hand it to him, pitch it to him, whatever we can do.”

Liberty will be without its starting tailback, B.J. Hayes, who might miss up to two weeks with a left shoulder injury. Even without him last week, though, Liberty racked up 300 rushing yards in a 58-13 rout of Coastal Carolina.

Allen moves to No. 1 on the depth chart at tailback, with Danny Broggin and SirChauncey Holloway set to split reps behind him.