The Party Crashers: ULM returns to play looking to spoil homecoming for South Alabama

MONROE, La. ( KTVE/KARD ) — It’s game week for the ULM Warhawks as they prepare to make a trip over to Mobile, Alabama to take on the South Alabama Jags

Bryant Vincent and company have been in many battles already this season and through five games of the season–there are some guys who are banged up.

But this second bye week came at the perfect time–allowing bumps and bruises to heal up as well as a chance for guys to clean things up before the final six-game stretch.

Saturday’s matchup proves to be major test–but the Warhawks have their bodies right, their minds cleared and they are ready to go spoil the party.

“I thought this bye week came at perfect timing,” Vincent said. “Our kids have played hard, we’ve worked hard, it’s been physical. When you look back and you look at Texas and then you go to even James Madison and then you’ve got Troy and Southern Miss. We had some really physical games there back-to-back-to-back and I thought we were able to come out of it fairly healthy. We’ve lost a couple of guys that meant a lot to this football team, but overall, it came at a good time. We were able to get some guys, who were banged up, back healthy and some guys who really needed to clean up and get back into it more prepared.”

The Warhawks are 7.5 underdogs heading into their showdown with the 3-4 South Alabama Jaguars–coming off a 25-9 win over Troy.

This is nothing new to the Warhawks–the continue to have that 134 mentality.

Despite the Jaguars only having 3 wins this season–Vincent says this is still a very talented group and his team needs to be laser focused.

This is a South Alabama team who is good up front on defense, they are efficient on offense and really a team who is great with situational football.

“I think that is a big key to this game,” said Vincent. “This game is very intriguing in situational football. That’s why it goes back to Coach Applewhite. He does a really good job in situational football. Offensively, they are 40% on third down. They’re 60% of fourth down. They are 6 for 10, so they are going to go for it. Their turnovers. They have thrown one interception and lost two fumbles. They have turned it over three times this year. The redzone. I think they are 32 of 34 in the redzone. That’s pretty good. They have played really good situational football on offense. Defensively, they are 39% on third down. So they are playing and winning football on third down. They are 2 for 7 of fourth down. They are winning fourth down. Redzone, they’ve been solid in the redzone. The kicking game, they have been solid. So, not only are they solid in all three phases, they are solid in situational football. What we’ve got to understand is when you look at an opponent like this, and you look in the mirror and see who they are and how they play the game, possessions are going to be at a premium. Every snap is going to be a big deal.”

The Jaguars have only turned the ball over three times this season and are second in the Sun Belt in time of possession.
They control the clock–but more important–they take care of the ball.
But the Warhawks have been quite successful forcing takeaways–tallying 5 interceptions and 5 forced fumbles through 6 games.
Turnovers are great–but in order to win–Vincent says his team needs to be able to capitalize when the opportunity presents itself.

“We’ve got to maximize it,” Vincent said. “In this game, I really believe in my heart, this game is going to come down to about 6 to 8 plays and probably 3 or 4 of those plays will come in the last six or seven minutes of this game. We’ve got to make the most of our opportunities and we have to go out and we have to play a really good team, in conference play, at their place on homecoming and we’ve got an opportunity to see where we are at.”

And that brings me to the point of homecoming.
The Warhawks are yet again someone’s homecoming.
But it is time for that to change.

“I think that, and it’s probably something I need to research, but I would say we have been everybody’s number one homecoming it seems like in the last ,” Vincent said. “There’s only one way to change that. You want to get it where they look at the schedule and they say we don’t want to schedule ULM for homecoming and the only way you make that start happening is you go beat people on their homecoming.”

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