Bobcats look to bounce back with road trip at South Alabama

A disheartening 30-20 loss at South Alabama last Saturday hasn’t shaken the confidence of Texas State. It’s motivated the Bobcats to get better.

Head coach Jake Spavital was pleased with the effort and energy the team played with against the Jaguars. But mistakes in critical moments of the games, specifically on third downs, proved to be the maroon and gold’s Achilles heel.

“When you look at it, a lot of the times when you see mistakes and bad plays, it's when you have 10 guys doing their job, and the one guy has a mistake,” Spavital said. “Those mistakes get magnified, especially versus a South Alabama team that is a ball-control team, they're a ball-control team. If you take away our last drive of the game and the last play of the first half, we probably had around 53 snaps of football, which is pretty low. And when you have mistakes, those are magnified. They are. And you know, you have the discussions with kids and they see where we stand and while we need to improve on.”

Texas State will line up against one of its toughest opponents of the season this week in No. 12 BYU. The team won’t get much by way of reinforcements, especially on defense; senior linebacker Markeveon “Binky” Coleman will be suspended for the first half of the game after committing a targeting penalty during the second half of last week’s contest. Sophomore cornerback Rodrick Hockley dislocated his left hand late in the game and exited with his arm in an air cast and Spavital said Tuesday he’s probably out for the rest of the season.

The absences come at a tough time, too. The Cougars currently boast the No. 6 offense in the FBS, averaging 541 yards and 43.6 points per game. BYU is led by junior quarterback Zach Wilson, who Spavital considers to be in the Heisman Trophy discussion with 1,641 yards passing, 12 touchdowns and just one interception. 

“Man, they're fun to watch,” Spavital said. “They can spread it out, they can run the spread offense in shotgun and they can get into 11 personnel, you can do all the play-action bootlegs and get on the move and throw on the run. And then you can get under center and do all the pro-style play-action stuff. So there's a pretty wide range of plays they can get to.”

The Bobcats will hope it can help its defense out by leaning on an offense looking to get back in sync. Spavital thought redshirt sophomore quarterback Brady McBride showed maturity against South Alabama, making correct reads and getting to his check downs quicker instead of scrambling into a tough play.

McBride finished the day completing 28-of-40 passes for 260 yards and a touchdown, and nearly had another score on a 36-yard dart to redshirt sophomore wide receiver Jah’Marae “K-Dot” Sheread, who was stopped on the goal line. The head coach plans to give McBride the starting nod again, hoping he’ll continue to find a rhythm.

“I thought it was Brady's best game. I thought he gave us a chance, really did. You know, a couple plays here or there he probably wishes he would have had back, but that's every game, every quarterback across the country,” offensive coordinator Jacob Peeler said. “I think he saw the field really well. Again, he's a kid that, going into the year, hadn't played football in two years. And so, obviously, with being in and out there for a few weeks, never really got a rhythm when we were going back and forth there. But I thought it was his best game, for sure.”

McBride was helped in part due to a breakout game by redshirt sophomore tight end Jackson Lanam. The Corpus Christi native reeled in five receptions for a team-high 48 yards, including the first touchdown of his career from nine yards out. 

“I'm always ready. I'm always told to be ready for passes. So I mean, I'm going in the game, I'm expecting anything,” Lanam said. “It felt really nice to get the ball. I mean, it was all a part of the game plan, the certain routes I was running. It all depends on if I'm needed or not on passing or blocking. It felt really good to catch the balls.”

Peeler described BYU’s defense as extremely physical and said the Cougars’ front seven is possibly the biggest Texas State will see all season. Spavital and Peeler both noted how experienced BYU is as well, with many players seeing the field in at least 40 games.

The Bobcats (1-5, 1-2 Sun Belt) and No. 12 Cougars (5-0) will kick off inside LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo, Utah, on Saturday at 9:15 p.m. The game will be broadcasted on ESPN. It’ll be the end of the team’s five-game road stretch that began on Sept. 19.

Lanam said he’s excited for the challenge of lining up against one of the top teams in the country.

“It's all about mindset. We could beat anybody we want to, it's all about mindset,” Lanam said. “Going to the ends of the games, it's just 'Who wants it?' You know, who's gonna put it on the ground, who's gonna lay it all for the game. I think if we just come out with the same mindset we came for SMU, same way we fought back against UTSA, if we start out like that and keep it going the entire game, I mean, we've got a chance. So I think we can do anything we want to.”