WKU Football: Keys to Victory vs. Houston Christian

What does WKU need to do to avoid disaster and not to lose to a middling FCS team?

Western Kentucky football is undefeated. Oh yeah, Tops! That’s nice to say. Now, how long can that continue? In our minds, they’re national championship contenders, right?

Yeah, so back to reality, though…

WKU handled the South Florida Bulls last week in what ended up being an impressive performance. In hindsight, apparently three starters weren’t playing on defense, starting receiver Michael Mathison was out, the starting long snapper, and others couldn’t even dress. Perhaps most jarringly, Malachi Corley couldn’t make it back on the field after getting absolutely slammed around for a quarter or so of action.

But guess what? Despite missing at least six of the 33 (including special teams) starters, WKU handled a USF team that is clearly improved, can clearly run the ball, and can clearly defend on all three levels. USF will win more than one game this season. Don’t you agree? WKU’s life was made difficult, but ultimately Western outscored USF 34-7 after getting down 17-7 in the first 16 or so minutes of the game.

WKU (1-0, 0-0 CUSA) and Houston Christian (1-0, 0-0 Southland) square off for only the second time in history Saturday at 6:30 Central. WKU handled HCU pre-Bailey Zappe and pre-name change - when they were known as Houston Baptist - with complete ease, 50-3 in 2016, the last season WKU won a Conference USA Championship and the last season Jeff Brohm was on The Hill.

Things are different now, with a couple of generations of Toppers having come and gone. Nearly two recruiting cycles ago, things were different for both programs. Houston Christian wasn’t even a full recruiting generation into the existence of its program.

WKU has monstrous expectations this season, virtually assuming a conference championship and possibly more. Houston Christian is hoping to find some way to come up with a winning season for the first time in its very short history (the program first fielded a team in 2013).

This should be a cakewalk. But will it be?

Keys to Victory

Put the World on Notice

This is not the speech I would give in the locker room if I were Tyson Helton, but it better be the result that comes back out of this game. WKU does not want to look back on its bid for a potential New Years Six Bowl and have another 38-27 victory over an FCS opponent. You don’t want a nailbiter, and you really don’t want them to score double digits, and hopefully you score more than 40. You want a check box when anyone looks at Houston Baptist that doesn’t give someone a chance to say anything against you. How do you do that? Just play good football and be efficient. Eliminate the major mistakes that cost touchdowns last week, and the Tops will probably accomplish this goal in some form or fashion.

Stop the Run

A simple notion, but there’s one blaring defensive issue from last week, and Houston Christian can run the rock if allowed. HCU had 473 yards of offense against Arkansas Baptist, and well over 50% of that was rushing yards. If allowed, they have four backs that produced last week. WKU better have a game plan to stop the run, because whatever last week was can’t happen to that level again, or WKU will probably lose. The Tops gave up the second most rushing yards in the entire country last week. Only three teams in America have given up more total rushing yards, and two of those teams have already played two games. WKU could give up zero to Houston Christian and still be around No. 100 in the country in rushing defense next week. That defensive effort against the USF ground game was absolutely disastrous. You can throw it all out the window if we continue to see that (I firmly believe we won’t to that level, to be clear!).

Bust a Run Early

If we’re thinking of things WKU struggled with last week, another one was moving the ball on the ground, especially early in the game. There just were not a lot of spaces for Markese Stepp and Davion Ervin-Poindexter to run through in the first half. That opened up as the Bulls’ defense softened later, but I would still like to see a serious indication that this line (and the backs) could be dominant in the run game. It would be a shame to have good running backs and not be able to get them good looks on the ground because the offensive line can’t push anybody backwards.

Fix the Unforced Stuff

Another serious issue was false starts, holding, and offensive pass interference. WKU only had 55 yards in penalties, but still had nine calls against them, most of which were false starts and an offsides defensively. One thing you want to see is fixing those types of issues immediately. People are going to screw up. Somebody is gonna pee down their leg a couple of times a game. It happens. But the false starts, especially weirdly on receivers, were incredibly excessive. That can’t be a thing for the rest of the season. Let’s squash it and move on.

Let the Crowd Fuel You

First, there must be a shoutout to Hank Wilson and Keith Wilcutt for literally buying 1,000 tickets (and attempting to buy even more) and trying to hand them out to encourage people to show up to WKU games. With it being parents’ weekend and with their efforts in combination with (granted) better weather, this should be a pretty energetic crowd, and hopefully, the Houch will be rocking. But use the home crowd, stoke them up, and call for them to fuel you through. Let’s see a loud L.T. Smith Stadium for the first time this season.

Honorable Mention: Fix the Long Snapping, Get Pressure up Front, Hold Houston Christian under 300 Total Yards

Prediction

I think my sentiment has been pretty plain. I’m not a coach. I don’t need to sugarcoat it. I pray the approach in the building is nothing like I’ve been saying from a fan/media perspective. However, I think this should be a blowout.

First of all, Houston Christian had that nice looking stat line against Arkansas Baptist, and it is definitely impressive, regardless of who you’re playing. However, if WKU played Campbellsville (NAIA with two wins last season), what would you expect WKU to do? I’m thinking a West Virginia Tech level (87-0, 9/8/2007) beatdown. So don’t get too carried away with the stats.

Also, HCU also maximized just about everything they could to get to 66 points. They only produced 473 yards of offense. That’s obviously outstanding, but by comparison, look at what Oklahoma (642 yards in a 73-0 win) or Oregon (729 yards in an 81-7 win) did last week against DI-level competition to boot. HCU probably overproduced in the scoring column to make that scoreboard number eyepopping.

Again, they should be respected, but WKU needs to wipe the floor with Houston Baptist, a team that will be lucky to have a winning season in a weak conference in the FCS.

To expect anything less is holding a low standard for the Tops. That being said, a win is a win and all of that, but let’s see a statement win where everything comes together and Ohio State watches the film and goes, “Uh oh”.

I’ll go big here. I’ll say Western Kentucky 56-Houston Christian 3.