Flames must find fire from within at Gardner-Webb

A few weeks ago, after Liberty’s football team returned from a 20-13 win at Charleston Southern, Flames tailback Aldreakis Allen expressed surprise at just how dead the atmosphere at CSU Stadium was.

That left Liberty coach Danny Rocco shaking his head, considering he took painstaking measures to make sure his team would be prepared for what awaited it in Charleston.

“The first thing I told them was that there will be nobody at the game,” Rocco said. “I think I even went overboard. You show them the film and you freeze the frame and there’s no one in the stands. You guys see that? Nobody’s there. And it’s not going to change.

“But these are young players.”

As in, maybe they actually need to see it up close to believe it.

The atmosphere today at Gardner-Webb figures to be a bit better, but not by much. The Bulldogs average 5,124 fans per game at Spangler Stadium, the place where Liberty clinched its first Big South championship two seasons ago with a 31-0 victory.

If there was a lesson to be learned from that trip to South Carolina, it’s that motivation has to come from within. And if the 16th-ranked Flames (7-2, 4-0 Big South) can’t find motivation for today’s game, there’s something wrong, Rocco said. Liberty enters the game with a 15-game conference win streak, hopes for a third straight conference championship and playoff aspirations all on the line.

“It’s all about us,” Rocco said. “It’s all about how badly do you want it? How committed are you? I’m talking this week a lot about commitment and confidence. I really think that’s a big part of who we are right now. I think we’ve got great chemistry right now.”

Gardner-Webb (5-4, 2-2) had its conference championship hopes dashed last Saturday in Conway, S.C., thanks to a 26-21 loss to Coastal Carolina. So it’s natural to question the motivation of a Bulldog team that is playing out the string, with only a winning season left as a realistic goal.

The Bulldogs have talented players, and Rocco said Tuesday that as recently as three weeks ago he felt Gardner-Webb was the team to beat in the Big South.

A matchup to watch today is Bulldogs quarterback Stan Doolittle against the Flames’ ball-hawking secondary. Liberty leads the nation in turnover margin, and Doolittle is coming off his worst performance of the year. He threw three interceptions at Coastal, one more than he had tossed in the season’s first eight games combined.

But he’s still a dangerous player, a senior who is capable of moving the ball down the field in short chunks. Liberty will also have to deal with bullish tailback Patrick Hall, who has scored seven touchdowns this season.

“It depends on what film you watch,” Rocco said of Doolittle. “If you watch the right film you’re going to see a kid who looks like he’s as good as any quarterback in this league. Statistically, you can bear that out in his efficiency and his completion percentages. But he did not play real well the other day. … He’s certainly very capable.”

The other concern is GWU’s linebacking corps, which has traditionally been the backbone of the Bulldogs’ defense. That group took a big hit last week when Jeffery Williams, the Big South’s preseason defensive player of the year, went down with a torn knee ligament, ending his season. Still, junior Marty Patterson has shown an ability to get into the backfield and harass quarterbacks, and he enters the game second in the Big South in tackles behind VMI’s Byron Allen.

“From what I’ve seen, they play real hard and play real fast and they’re pretty sharp tacklers,” Liberty receiver/quarterback Mike Brown said. “They pretty much shut the middle down. But hopefully we can watch more film and scheme them up a little bit.”

No matter what happens today, next week’s Liberty-Stony Brook game on Long Island will decide the conference championship. But for Liberty to have any hopes of cracking the 16-team FCS playoff field for the first time, a win in Boiling Springs today is a must.

Said Rocco: “I still like to think this team is in control of its own destiny.”