Published: August 27, 2008 11:13 am      

QB Bomar awaits ECU Tigers

Ada — After playing a home-and-home with national NCAA Division II power Pittsburg State to open their past two football seasons, the East Central University Tigers could probably have expected a little softer start to the 2008 campaign. No such luck.

Instead of finding another Division II heavyweight for the lidlifter to a season everybody associated with ECU athletics is hoping will turn around the school’s three-year losing streak, third-year Tiger head coach Kurt Nichols instead decided to step up in class and will send his rebuilt club against Division 1-AA power Sam Houston Thursday night in Huntsville, Texas.

The game, which has a 6 p.m. kickoff, will pit the Tigers — winners of five of 21 games the past two years and without a winning season since 2004 — against a Bearkat squad led by former University of Oklahoma quarterback Rhett Bomar. In his first season at SHSU, Bomar was No. 1 in the Southland Conference and No. 8 in all of 1-AA in total offense and led the Bearkats to a 7-4 record.

Sam Houston returns six starters on each side of the ball and will open the 2008 season ranked 31st in Division 1-AA. ECU, meanwhile, will have just five players — quarterback Marcus Johnson, offensive linemen Justin Nail, Jay Reaves and Tim Bills and cornerback Lionel Young — Thursday in the same positions they played in the final game of 2007.

The news isn’t all bad for the Tigers, however. Former Ada High All-Americans Craig and Chad Roark will join Nail, Reaves and Bills on what should be easily the best starting offensive line Nichols has had in his three seasons at ECU, and an outstanding recruiting season has the Tigers deeper and more talented at virtually every position on both sides of the ball than they were at the end of last fall’s 2-9 campaign.

“As far as quality linemen, we’re a lot better than last year,” Nichols said. “Depth-wise, we’re twice as good at quarterback, running back, linebacker and receiver. We’ll also be a lot better on special teams coverage than we’ve been the past couple of years.”

In Bomar, who passed for 2,209 yards and 10 touchdowns and rushed for 406 yards and seven scores in 2007, the Tigers will face the best quarterback they will see all season, and the Bearkats also return Bomar’s top three targets from last year in wideouts Catron Houston, Justin Wells and Trey Payne.

“Offensively, they run the ball well and throw the ball well,” Nichols said of the Bearkats. “They’re pretty multiple offensively. They’re replacing people on the offensive line (SHSU graduated three all-conference linemen and All-American tight end Blake Martin), but I’m sure they’ll have talent there.”

Nichols said the ability of Johnson — the Lone Star Conference North Division Offensive Player of the Year as a sophomore last fall — and the ECU offense to keep Bomar and Company off the field could be a key to keeping the Tigers in Thursday’s game.

“Our defense has a lot of new people playing together, so we need the offense to step up,” Nichols noted. “Sam Houston is extremely explosive on offense. We have some question marks on defense because we have so many new starters, so we need our offense to keep their offense off the field as much as possible.”

Johnson will be joined in the backfield by a tailback rotation that could go four-deep, even though senior Alex Woodley — a transfer from Missouri who was No. 1 on the depth chart — is questionable with an injury. Junior Charles Huffman, No. 1 at tailback last August before suffering his second serious knee injury in three years, is the likely starter, but redshirt sophomore Larry Carter-Holmes, redshirt freshman Josh Dutton and true freshman Collin Avery should all see some action.

“There will probably be four people taking snaps at tailback,” Nichols said. “How much they play will depend on how productive they are in the game.”

ECU is also breaking in a new set of receivers after graduating its top pass catchers from last season, but Nichols expressed confidence that his new group of wideouts — led by senior Justin Goolsby, junior Nigel Cooper and sophomores Keewan King and Jerold Loveless — can do the job.

“I’m looking for our receiving corps to step up early and take some of the burden off our defense,” he said. “I’m looking for our receivers to move the chains, and I think Marcus will do a good job against anybody he plays.”

The biggest key to time of possession for ECU, however, will probably be the job tackles Reaves and Bills do in containing the Sam Houston pass rush.

“(The Bearkats) return probably the best pass rusher in the Southland Conference (defensive end Chris Brown, who had five sacks in 2007), but I think our tackles will do a decent job on him,” Nichols predicted. “He’ll probably be the best pass rusher we’ll see all year.”

Nichols scrapped ECU’s traditional 4-3 defense in favor of a new 3-4 scheme this spring, but his surprising depth on the defensive line — one of the Tigers’ thinnest positions last fall — might have changed his thinking.

“We’re probably running the 4-3 as much as the 3-4, because we have more good defensive linemen than we thought we would,” he explained. “I don’t think it makes a difference what we run defensively ... it’s how we execute.”

Realistically, an ECU victory Thursday would rank among the biggest upsets in college football this season at any level. Nichols said, however, that a loss doesn’t necessarily mean a setback for his program.

“We’re a huge underdog,” Nichols admitted. “I just want us to compete and not make mental mistakes. If we get ‘out-personneled’, that’s one thing. I want us to play hard and be competitive.

“If we get run by, that’s one thing or if my offensive linemen get run over, that’s a personnel issue,” he added. “I just want to us to play four quarters, I want to see us not turn the ball over, and I want us to tackle better than we’ve been tackling (in preseason). I also want to see how we handle adversity.”

The opener is just the first game in a brutal pre-North Division schedule that will see the Tigers host Tarleton State on Sept. 13 and visit another LSC South power, Abilene Christian (the overall conference favorite this fall) on Oct. 4. Three of ECU’s four games after Sam Houston are at Norris Field, then the Tigers are on the road for five of their final six, with four of those road games and the Oct. 25 home date with Southwestern against North Division opponents.

“We’ve got a tough first six weeks,” Nichols said. “We’ll see two of the top Division II teams in the country (Tarleton and Abilene Christian), and we open against one of the best 1-AA teams in the country.

“You can’t compare Sam Houston and Pittsburg State (for a season opener),” he added. “Pittsburg is a Division II team, Sam Houston is a 1-AA team. This is a tougher team, talent-wise, than Pittsburg State, but that’s only on paper. As far as the intensity of their programs, it’s very comparable.”

ECU opens its home schedule on Saturday, Sept. 6, against LSC South rival Texas A&M-Kingsville, and Nichols said a Thursday opener against a team that, on paper at least, is superior to any club the Tigers will face this season, has its advantages.

“Neither one of us know where we are on certain things,” he said. “The first game, everybody has questions.

“We might as well play on Thursday,” Nichols added. “It will give me more reps going into the Kingsville game.”