UAB crushes Alcorn 41-3 in season opener
Photo courtesy of Ken Shepherd
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - August 30, 2024
UAB 41, ALCORN STATE 3
WHAT IT MEANS: Obviously, the most significant thing is that UAB moves on to the next assignment with a 1-0 record. It wasn’t perfect – most opening games aren’t perfect – but there are plenty of things to build upon. On a night when the opening kickoff was delayed by an hour because of stormy weather, special teams had a big night with highlights provided by Kam Shanks, Sirad Bryant, Noah Grant and Jonah Delange. And the defense displayed improvement, even though much tougher challenges are ahead.
WHEN THE GAME TURNED: UAB gained control quickly with a crisp opening drive that culminated with the first of two scoring runs by Lee Beebe Jr. and followed that with Sirad Bryant’s blocked punt to set up a 9-yard scoring toss from Jacob Zeno to Brandon Hawkins Jr. The Blazers offense then turned it over on three consecutive series with two of those coming on Beebe fumbles. The turning point came in the final seven minutes of the first half when the Blazers scored twice to turn a sloppy 14-3 lead into a 28-3 advantage at halftime. The first of those two touchdowns came after UAB wiggled out of a self-induced 2nd-and-33 situation with passes from Zeno of 19 yards to Brandon Buckhaulter and 15 yards for a touchdown to Amare Thomas.
WHY UAB WON: The defense had a big hand in this one. Alcorn State finished with 177 yards on 62 snaps. The Braves were 4-of-15 on third down and their only red zone trip came on a drive that started at the UAB 30-yard line after a Beebe fumble. UAB forced a pair of turnovers and had quarterback sacks from five different players.
WHAT ARE THE KEY STATS: Sure, there were times that UAB struggled a bit to run the ball consistently. But the 302 rushing yards was the most UAB gained on the ground since totaling 406 yards during a win over Louisiana Tech in the final regular season game of 2022.
WHO GETS THE GAME BALLS: Kam Shanks had 171 all-purpose yards with six catches for 73 yards and three punt returns for 98 yards. His 57-yard punt return for a touchdown marked UAB’s first punt return score since J.J. Nelson’s 63-yard return against Northwestern State on Sept. 21, 2013.
*Perhaps no UAB defender had a better fall camp than Chris Bracy. The sophomore safety carried that over to the first game, leading the team with eight tackles and adding a pass breakup.
*John Jones, who is in his first season as the Blazers special teams coordinator, deserves a game ball with the job that his group did on Thursday. Obviously, the blocked punt and Shanks’ return were easy to spot. But, the success went deeper than that. Kickoff coverage units allowed 12.7 yard per return on three returns and Jonah Delange had four touchbacks. UAB averaged 21.5 yards two kickoff returns. Patrick Foley’s lone punt traveled 64 yards with no return. Overall, a good first night for the special teams.
WHAT DID COACH DILFER SAY IN POSTGAME PRESS CONFERENCE:
Opening statement: That's the goal. We took a very matter -of -fact approach to this one, try not to let our emotions get the best of us, right. And I was super pleased with the defense and special teams, especially after last year, those being areas that weren't productive for us. They played a very high level. Offensively, getting the ball in (Kam Shanks) hands was a big deal. He made a lot of plays. But disappointing, overall, in the consistency on offense. We have a very high standard. We have an incredibly high standard offensively and tonight we're going close to that. But we were carried by a great special teams, great defense.
On the defense: Great communication, guys playing together, understanding what was coming at them, playing fast, getting off blocks, not letting adversity (hurt). We fumbled the ball, put them in a bad field position spot. We talked about it, ‘Hey, hold them to three.’ They hold them to three. You know winning the downs you should win, getting them in third and tough to manage and winning those downs. Running to the football, you know, you saw a lot of green helmets around the ball. Attacking the ball, ball excellence, something we talked a lot about. So, really kind of (how) it unfolded as we've seen happen in camp. We knew we were better and we still need to get better. But the things we saw in camp showed up tonight.
On the locker room message: The message was congratulations. I mean listen, when you go on a mission, which we did, and you accomplished the mission, you should be congratulated on it. They work really hard. I've said it all offseason, I wish you could understand how hard these young men work. They're student-athletes. We grind them in the football facility. We ask them to be great humans off the field. They work really hard. I hope game night is an expression of all that hard work. You want to congratulate them when they pull it off. You also want them to recognize that look how good we could be. You want to have that carrot dangling out there. And the good thing is we're recruiting kids that feel the same way. It's not like I have to convince these two or a lot of other ones that greatness is out there if you chase it hard enough. But the message was matter of fact, we congratulated the defense, special teams and said there's a lot of things we need to get better at. And they were like, yeah, let's go get better. You know, we will take a really hard look at this film. It wouldn't surprise me if we come out with some guys are saying, man, I could have played better. I got a great out better there. I got to handle that better. I got to be in better shape. You know, they will look at it and see that there's a lot of growth left and they'll want to attack that growth. They're excited to get a day off on Saturday, which they deserve. They haven't had one in a while, so nobody wants to get away from you guys more than me, trust me. So, it'll be nice to get away and then Sunday mission number two will start. And we'll take the same approach that we took this week.
On communication among the players: You saw guys, one, there's just no flinch. They just rolled out there and said, hey, we got a job to do, let's do it. You did see guys lining guys up, making corrections, communicating. On the sideline, there was great communication. I thought our sideline operation with the iPads, there's a risk with the iPads that you go to the sideline and you just do too much fixing and not looking forward. I thought our guys did a good job of fixing stuff that needed to be fixed and move on to the next series and anticipate what you could be seeing. I enjoyed all that.
On the matter-of-fact approach: I think they're more mature. I think a lot of them are very internally motivated. They don't need a lot of hype and inspiration. I think we started just kind of, we all just accepted, we all looked ourselves in the mirror after last year, those of us that are back, we don't ever want to feel that way again. Let's start with the man in the mirror first and start with me. I think they all took that approach. And I do believe that we've kept the messaging pretty tight, right. Like we've talked about brotherhood, we've talked about our standard, and we really don't talk about a lot of other noise. We package that a bunch of different ways, but really we just want to lock arms and do it for one another, do it for the city of Birmingham. make sure that what we do every eight seconds is to reach our standard. And if you do that again and again and again, good things happen, you don't get caught up in all the other stuff that distracts a football coach or student athlete, you just stay, you know, the thing becomes the thing.
WHERE IS UAB’S NEXT ASSIGNMENT: The Blazers go on the road for the first time this season, heading to Monroe, Louisiana for a game against Bryant Vincent and his ULM team. UAB is still looking for its first road win under Trent Dilfer. Louisiana-Monroe began the season with a 30-14 win over Jackson State on Thursday night.