A weekend to remember

Column from Monday's edition of The Star

I said before I left with Gardner-Webb’s football team to Mississippi State that it would be a trip the program would never forget.

You can count me in on that statement as well.

Covering games is obviously what I do. Not a week goes by that I don’t see an impressive individual or team performance at the high school and college levels.

But it’s not often that I get to witness history in this business. That’s what happened Saturday night when the Runnin’ Bulldogs took the field at Mississippi State as the first Big South Conference program to face a squad from the mighty Southeastern Conference.

That fact will be far from the only lasting memory from the trip.

The bus rides, the charter flights, the conversations — not to mention the blogging — all made this an enjoyable journey to say the least. Don’t get me wrong, there was a good bit of work involved in interviewing folks, taking pictures, posting blogs and oh yeah, covering the game and getting a story back to The Star pretty quick Saturday night.

But there’s work and there’s work that’s a lot of fun. This weekend proved to be more of the latter.

First of all, I want to thank the good people at Gardner-Webb for the opportunity to go on this trip and for all the cooperation from the fans, players and coaches from Friday afternoon until the early morning hours on Sunday.

I also want to express my appreciation to all the folks that visited the blog in Cleveland County and Starkville, Miss. — and all points in between. One of the best moments of the weekend was when one of the Sports Information Directors from MSU come up to me in the pressbox and said she enjoyed following the blog over the weekend.

Due to time constraints last night, I didn’t get a chance to interview MSU coach Sylvester Croom or any of his players following the game. Here’s a few quotes from the university’s Web site.

From Croom: “First I wish Gardner-Webb players and coaching staff the best of luck the rest of their season. I thought that those kids came out in the second half when things were not looking their way and played with valiant effort. This is a game that we expect to win and are suppose to win, but it is very easy to overlook this kind of game and slip up.”

“We had never been in this type of situation, but our kids came out and put points up like I expected us to do in the first half. To Gardner-Webb’s credit they came back.”

From MSU linebacker Gabe O’Neal: “There are many teams that are starting to run that spread offense. We have to practice well against that and prepare the best we can. I think it is a good opportunity to face this offense because we will have to face it again later in the season.”

Here’s a few additional stats from Saturday night:
Gardner-Webb’s 334 total yards were more than either Tulane or Auburn gained against MSU.

Facing the SEC’S third-best pass defense, GWU finished with 203 passing yards and had more first downs (20) than the home team.

Defensively, GWU held MSU to just 118 yards in the second half (56 rushing) and just six first downs.

True freshman linebacker Jeffrey Williams finished with a career-high 11 tackles to pace Gardner-Webb’s defense. Mario Brown posted eight tackles, 1.5 tackles for loss and a quarterback pressure.

Next: The Runnin’ Bulldogs host Austin Peay Saturday at 6 p.m. in a non-conference contest.