ABILENE -- One week after opening Anthony Field at Wildcat Stadium to much fanfare and capping the opening weekend with a 24-3 win over Houston Baptist, the ACU Wildcats will be back on their home turf Saturday night when they host a team coming off a win over Incarnate Word in a game that ended in one of the most bizarre ways imaginable.
Both the Wildcats and Lumberjacks are 1-2 overall, and both enter tonight's contest after opening Southland Conference play last weekend with victories. Kickoff is set for 6 p.m. from Anthony Field at Wildcat Stadium. The game can be seen on acusports.com (link above) and heard locally on 98.1 FM with
Grant Boone (play by play) and Jim Reese (color analyst) calling the action.
ACU got its first conference win over the Huskies with a dominating defensive effort (limiting HBU to just 129 yards of total offense) and an offense that ran the ball 41 times for 162 yards and controlled the clock for 82 plays and 38 minutes, 50 seconds in the game.
Dallas Sealey threw for 195 yards and one score - a big 33-yard strike to
Carl Whitley just before halftime to give ACU a 14-3 lead at the break – and backup
Luke Anthony threw one late in the game to
Josh Fink to seal the victory.
SFA led Incarnate Word 21-0 after the first quarter and then watched the Cardinals rally to take a 31-21 lead early in the fourth quarter. But the Lumberjacks cut the lead to 31-24 on a Storm Ruiz field goal with 8:24 to play and tied it at 31-31 with 5:24 left on a 24-yard touchdown pass from Foster Sawyer to Tamrick Pace.
That only set up one of the strangest endings of the young 2017 season.
UIW snapped the ball on third-and-10 from its own 25-yard-line with 15 seconds to play and ran a flea-flicker, trying to get a receiver open deep down the middle of the field to set up a potential game-winning field goal attempt. Instead, Sean Brophy's pass was intercepted by Alize Ward at the SFA 30-yard line, and he returned the pick 70 yards for a touchdown, collapsing into the end zone just after time had expired, giving the 'Jacks the 37-31 win and setting off a wild celebration for SFA. Ward earned Southland Conference and STATS National Defensive Player of the Week honors for his
effort on the game-winning play.
ACU enters Saturday's game with the second-lowest scoring offense in the league (16.0 points per game), while the Lumberjacks are 10th in the 11-team league in scoring defense, allowing 46.7 ppg. ACU is fourth in scoring defense (26.3 ppg) and SFA is eighth in scoring offense (21.7 ppg). The Wildcats are eighth in the league in total offense (333.7 ypg) and SFA is 10th (274.0 ypg) and ACU is sixth in the league in total defense (405.0 ypg allowed) and SFA is 10th at 506.7 ypg allowed.
The Wildcats are led offensively by junior QB
Dallas Sealey, who is fifth in the league passing yards per game (231.0) and leads the league in completions (86), attempts (129) and completiong percentage (66.7). He completed a career-high 73.7 percent of his passes last week against Houston Baptist (28 of 38). Sawyer is eighth in the league in passing yards per game (170.0), but the Lumberjacks are 11th in the league in rushing yards per game (59.3), just behind ACU, which ranks 10th at 77.3 ypg.
Defensively, the Wildcats are second in the league on third downs, holding teams to just 11 for 32 (34.4 percent) through the first three weeks of the season. ACU safety
Bolu Onifade – who had a career-high 17 tackles two weeks against Colorado State –is tied for ninth in the league in tackles with 23 (7.7 per game).
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