North Carolina A&T now has the monkey off its back in three major respects. The Aggies were virtually eliminated from the MEAC race losing 14-10 contest to the most likely to be MEAC Champion Norfolk State Spartans on the road in last week and preceded by a heart breaking 35-28 overtime loss to Howard the week before also on the road. The pressure of trying to chase that dream is now off their backs. That’s the first hurdle out of the way.
In fact A&T is the only football team in the nation that had drawn a four week road trip against its top four conference opponents in the entire country, a major malfunction and distinctly horrible job of scheduling done by the MEAC office in the offseason last summer.
For a team that is currently carrying only 33 full scholarship players on its roster and host of walk-ons and academic upstarts to offset the number problem, most fans figured that the Aggies at best would repeat 2010 record of 1-10 or even worse.
So, somewhere near last place was the preseason expectation and that could be easily understood by the fan base.
No one was really expecting much change even with the hiring of arguably the best coach in all of HBCU football and one of the best in the FCS ranks in general in Rod Broadway from Grambling.
The North Carolina native clearly understood what he would be working with in his first year in Greensboro and quickly lowered expectations while he quietly started to change the internal workings of the A&T football program and the mindset of a loser that was firmly rooted after eight straight seasons of in two coaches, falling APR scores, player dissension with retention problems out the ears and just plain bad football on the field.
What Broadway has done has gotten his small group of undersized and an inexperienced kid to do is learn how to compete and play with the big guys on the block no matter the circumstance.
That hurdle was broached when A&T dismantled a solid Morgan State that will be playing for the conference title this week against Norfolk on the road and then crushed preseason top pick Bethune Cookman in successive weeks. Hurdle number two is gone.
The third hurdle facing the Aggies will be determined in the final three games of the season as the Aggies still have an even shot of having its first winning season since 2003. To get to that magic 6-5 mark, the Aggies most likely must defeat either FAMU or S.C. State on the road and then look to dispatch its arch nemesis and their most bitter rival in NCCU at home to close out the year.
The football gods have not been kind to the Aggies in these last two weeks losing two exceptionally close games which Broadway felt his team should have won.
The Aggies have to now learn how to close out when given golden opportunities. They have learned how to compete. They have learned how to win games.
Now the final stage in the maturation process and transforming the program is how resting on how to finish out and come out on top. It is now a best of three series for A&T. Win two of these last three games and this year’s team would have come full circle.
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A&T travels down to Tallahassee, Fl. tomorrow to face FAMU. The last two years A&T has been within an eyelash of taking out the Rattlers who were both times the superior team.
In 2009 A&T lead going late in the fourth quarter before a FAMU friendly official gave one of the worst spots of a football on a fourth inches play in recent memory.
Last season the Aggies lost a tough overtime game to a FAMU team in a defensive struggle that saw little offense until the final period.
After A&T took a three point lead in overtime, the Rattlers scored the winning TD after some sloppy tackling in the backfield on third and three sweep that was diagnosed perfectly but two key tackles were missed at the eight and the six and the runner skipped just inside the pylon for the win.
FAMU has had and up and down season and had a bye last week and will come in healthy and rested. A&T is still feeling the sting of two last second losses which in both cases may be a good thing for A&T.
The Aggies should be hungry for win knowing that competing isn’t an issue anymore but just executing in the red zone successfully will be thier key. FAMU has had the rest but generally teams coming off byes are not sharp at these return games.
Figure on another down to the wire game again between these two teams and overtime would not surprise this writer. Here’s hoping the Aggies have an antidote for being snake bitten.
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PREDICTION
N.C. A&T – 24
FAMU – 21
