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WICHITA FALLS – The ACU Wildcats are back in the NCAA Division II playoffs for a fourth straight season, and just like in 2006 they'll enter the “second season” as the No. 6 team in their region and on the road for the duration of their playoff run.
That road begins Saturday at noon when the Wildcats open the playoffs with a noon matchup against Midwestern State, the team that beat the ACU, 15-13, in last week's regular-season finale at Memorial Stadium. That victory helped secure a share of the Lone Star Conference title for the Mustangs and left the Wildcats to wait almost 24 hours to find out their post-season fate.
Seven days later, the Wildcats and Mustangs will hook up again in the same stadium, but this time with much more on the line than a conference championship. At stake Saturday is the continuation of the season for one team and the end for the other.
The winner of Saturday's contest will advance to the second round of the NCAA Division II Super Region Four playoffs where it will take on No. 2 seed Northwest Missouri State in Maryville, Mo., on Nov. 21.
The Wildcats get a rare chance to go right back to the site where they lost their last game and make up for it with bigger stakes at play.
“I've never had the chance to go and play the same team the very next week, so that will be a little bit different,” ACU head coach Chris Thomsen said. “We've had some games in the playoffs where we've played a team we played in the regular season, but never the very next week. This will be a great experience for everyone involved.”
The Wildcats will try to reverse a trend that saw them lose three of their last four games heading into the post-season. ACU got off to a 7-0 start and rose to No. 1 in the nation in the American Football Coaches' Association poll before dropping three of their last four games, all to teams from the LSC South Division.
ACU enters Saturday's game as the No. 18 team in the AFCA and having barely reached the playoffs as the No. 6 seed in the region.
“I don't apologize at all for being 8-3; not in this league,” Thomsen said. “The reason we lost three out of four is because very game in the LSC South Division is a battle. We got four teams into the NCAA post-season and one into a bowl game (West Texas A&M in the Dec. 5 Kanza Bowl). I've been in this league a long time, and I've never seen this much parity before. But it doesn't matter now if you were 11-0 or 8-3 in the regular season. Everybody is 0-0 and playing for the same thing.”
ACU's defense turned in one of its best performances of the season over the final three quarters of last week's two-point loss. The Wildcats limited one of the nation's top offensive units to 112 yards of offense and no points after the Mustangs put up 224 yards and 15 points in the first quarter.
Included in that domination by the Wildcats was the fact that they shut down Midwestern's passing game. Zack Eskridge entered the game as the national leader in passing efficiency while completing better than 73 percent of his passes on the season.
But against the ACU defense, Eskridge completed just 58.3 percent of his passes (14 of 24) for 224 yards and one score. What's more impressive for the ACU defense is that Eskridge was 11 for 11 for 197 yards and one score in the first quarter, leaving him 3 for 13 for 24 yards over the final three quarters, including 1 of 10 for six yards in the second half.
ACU sacked him five times and was credited with six quarterback hurries as Eskridge faced constant pressure in the pocket over the game's final three quarters. But it was his legs – not his arm – that hurt the Wildcats in the second half.
The Mustangs' junior quarterback had runs of 25, 16, 14 and 14 in the second half, all of them coming on second-and-long plays. He also kept the ACU offense pinned deep in its own end of the field with four pooch punts out of the shotgun formation. He averaged 36.8 yards on those punts and dropped three of them inside the 20-yard line, including one at the 5-yard line and another at the 3-yard line.
ACU linebacker
Kevin Washington was all over the field, finishing with 11 tackles, one-half sack, one-half tackle for loss and one quarterback hurry. Linebacker
Fred Thompson finished with eight tackles, one sack and one tackle for loss, while defensive end
Aston Whiteside finished with five tackles, 1.5 sacks and 1.5 tackles for loss.
ACU's offense, meanwhile, scuffled for just 53 yards, two first downs and no points in the first quarter before scoring the final 13 points of the game and posting 13 first downs and 273 yards of offense over the final three quarters. But the Wildcat had two key turnovers in the third quarter and had to settle for a pair of field goals by
Morgan Lineberry (56 and 51 yards).
The Wildcats had the ball down by two points late in the fourth quarter, but a fourth-and-long pass from
Mitchell Gale to
Edmund Gates fell incomplete, turning the ball over to the Mustangs, who ran out the clock on the game. Junior running back
Reggie Brown had 104 yards rushing and Gale completed 18 of 32 passes for 141 yards, but the Wildcats couldn't get the big play when they needed it to take the lead.
Lineberry was a bright spot, converting the third-longest field goal in ACU program history and becoming the first kicker in school history to have two field goals of more in one game and the first kicker in program history to have three field goals of more than 50 yards in the same season. He was named LSC South Division Special Teams Player of the Week for his efforts.
