Pittsburg State set to play home opener

December 10, 2011. A night to remember for Pittsburg State football as the Gorillas beat Delta State 49-23 in front of an enthusiastic Brandenburg Field/Carnie Smith Stadium crowd to advance to the Division II title game.

Pitt State head coach Tim Beck and linebacker Nate Dreiling remember that night, since Beck stated that night was as electric as he’s ever heard Carnie Smith and Dreiling said thinking about that night gave him goosebumps.

That was the last home game at Pitt State and with all those months between  home games, one can bet Pitt State fans will be in a frenzy tonight when the Central Oklahoma Bronchos are welcomed to the jungle of Carnie Smith.

“We hope it’s the same crowd,” Beck said. “We hope it’s all the same people that are there because they knew how to get after it. Delta State was a great atmosphere but again, I think everybody’s eager. For our students on campus, last weekend was a good weekend to go home, this weekend is a good weekend to stay in Pittsburg. Hopefully, they’ll stay here and get a taste of what it’s like to play at Carnie Smith Stadium and hopefully we can make a good impression on them and get them to come back every game.”

Tonight being the official enshrinement of the 25th anniversary PSU Athletics Hall of Fame class should add to the excitement of the first home game.

“Hall of Fame weekend’s a big weekend,” Beck said. “We want to talk to our players about how important that is to us and the lettermen coming back and walking us over is also an important part. We’ve got two linebackers going in, Wes Baker and B.J. McGivern. B.J. McGivern’s as good as we’ve ever had here on our kickoff team. He was an impact from the day he walked in here. He was fun to watch, fun to coach. Wes Baker was just a great player as well, that played a lot of great games for us as an inside linebacker. Those are important parts of the tradition that we have here at Pittsburg State and it’s important that our players kind of embrace what’s going on.”

Pitt State won its season opener against Northeastern State with one statistic not associated with playing winning football.

“First thing that sticks out would be turnovers,” Beck said. “That was a big goal of ours before the season, that we wanted to do a lot better job than last year taking care of the ball. To come out in Game 1 and have four turnovers . . . normally, you don’t win when you have four turnovers, so that’s the first thing we’ve got to address and so hopefully we’ll shore that up a little bit.”

Beck said that defensive coordinator David Wiemers focused his furor on better communication between defensive players and Beck mentioned that continued missed assignments and missed alignments on special teams will cost Pitt State later in the season.

In his first collegiate start, sophomore quarterback Anthony Abenoja completed a school-record 26 passes and passed for a school-record 378 yards, as well as three scores. Asked by a reporter if Pitt State will continue to focus on its passing attack, Beck had this answer.

“The defense will dictate what we do,” Beck said. “We’re running the same offense we ran last year. Now, Zac Dickey wasn’t there to carry it 15 times. . . . We were capable of throwing it 50 or 60 times last year, it’s just you have to take your personnel and do what’s best with them. You look at your guys who are game-breaker kind of guys and say these are the guys who need to carry it or these are the guys who we need to throw the ball to or whatever the case may be. We’ve got a good group of receivers and a good group of running backs. Anthony probably won’t carry it as much as Zac did at the end of the season but he’s still capable of running the football.”

The fact that Missouri Southern (Central Oklahoma’s first opponent) runs a triple-option offense and Pitt State a more wide-open offense presented a challenge in game preparation for at least of the PSU coaching staff.

“That wasn’t a great video for us because Southern’s offense and our offense doesn’t match very good,” Beck said. “It wasn’t a great video for our offensive staff. We think they’ll be in some four down linemen, possibly three down linemen but they’re obviously not going to crowd the box as much as they did against Southern because they had to stop the run every down. For our offense, it’s kind of like a first game again because we’re not 100 percent sure what we’re going to see. Defensively, we saw a lot of different formations and different sets that UCO will probably do against us.”

In their 25-20 home loss to Missouri Southern last week, the Bronchos of Central Oklahoma recovered from a 25-7 deficit to make Missouri Southern sweat in crunch time. The Lions came through with a crucial fourth-down conversion late in the game, nullifying any comeback win for UCO.

Offensively, in Week 1, senior running back Joshua Birmingham led the Bronchos with 83 yards and one TD on 19 carries; last year, Birmingham ran for 882 yards and seven TDs. Junior college transfer Adrian Nelson passed for 148 yards and one TD on 14 of 26 passing in his UCO debut; Nelson transferred from Navarro College, where he passed for over 3,750 yards his sophomore year.

Defensively, junior linebacker Adrian Shoecraft recorded a team-high nine tackles against Missouri Southern.

Pitt State and Central Oklahoma play the first game on the MIAA Network television schedule.