By Jim Henry
jhenry@joplinglobe.com
In a season-opening 45-31 victory over Harding, Missouri Southern quarterback Adam Hinspeter threw for a school-record 422 yards.
Then last week, Pittsburg State defeated Chadron State 38-31, but the Gorillas yielded 387 yards on 38 pass completions.
That combination, however, doesn’t necessarily mean the Lions will fill the air with footballs in tonight’s annual Miner’s Bowl, sponsored by Mt. Carmel Regional Medical Center.
“Time will tell,” Lions head coach Bart Tatum said. “It depends on their approach, their philosophy, their game plan defensively. If we take 80 snaps, I’d love to run it 40 times.”
The Lions and Gorillas bring 2-0 records into the MIAA opener for the second straight year. The Gorillas won twice on the road, 16-12 over Central Oklahoma and by a touchdown at Chadron State, and the Lions posted home victories over Harding 45-31 and Haskell 66-9.
“I feel very good about our guys’ attitude,” Tatum said. “They are working hard, doing things that ought to be done to be successful. Coming off a 2-0 start, we got a little momentum. That was our idea, to have some momentum built up going into the conference schedule.”
The Lions went to their passing game two weeks ago because Harding’s defense crowded the line of scrimmage. Hinspeter tied a school record with five touchdown tosses, and with 704 career completions, he needs only 11 completions to pass Kasey Waterman from Missouri Western as the conference’s career leader.
“Missouri Southern is a team that is going to spread the ball around,” Pittsburg State head coach Chuck Broyles said. “They have good receivers. The quarterback has been a four-year starter, a big kid who throws the ball well. They have some skilled players, and on defense, they hustle and run to the ball well.
“They were 6-5 last year and have a lot of veterans back. Southern is one of those teams that didn’t get picked very high in the conference (seventh) but is a scary team when you have to play them.”
The Gorillas certainly aren’t lacking on offense. Senior Mark Smith, 15-4 as the Gorillas’ starting quarterback, is seventh in school history with 3,262 passing yards, and he needs 17 yards to move into the top 10 on the career total offense list.
Senior tailback Caleb Farabi, Smith’s teammate during four state championship seasons at St. Mary’s-Colgan, is 17th at PSU with 2,133 yards and has gained at least 100 yards on the ground in 10 of his last 13 games.
“I coached a guy like (Farabi) in Maryville by the name of Xavier Omon,” Tatum said. “He’s with the Buffalo Bills now, and it really helps as a playcaller, to have a guy that can make one, two, people miss at the point of attack and still be productive. Caleb is really elusive, has exceptional feet, great vision. It will be all we can do to keep him contained. We’re not going to stop him.”
The Lion offense faces its stiffest challenge to date tonight.
“Back in the mid-1990s and late ’90s, Pitt State was as good as anybody in the country in Division II football on defense,” Tatum said. “They flew around and played with an attitude. It appears that this year’s unit is more like those from the ’90s.”
Tatum said his coaching staff hasn’t discovered any major surprises in the Lions’ first two games.
“We’re a little deeper in the defensive line than we’ve been since I’ve been here,” he said. “We still have pretty decent speed on the defensive side of the ball, good athleticism.
“Our pass protection on offense is still pretty good. We’re proud of that and plan to keep building on it, and we have to be able to mix up the run and pass, which we intend to try to do.”
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Lions plan to mix it up against Pittsburg State
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