Bethune-Cookman tops the charts
ROSCOE NANCE
Special to the BCSP
It was the Year of the Cats in 2002 as Bethune-Cookman fashioned the most successful season in school history with an 11-2 record, a Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference championship and its first-ever Division I-AA playoff appearance.
With quarterback Allen Suber fully
recovered from a sprained right foot injury that caused him
to miss two of the Wildcats' final four games and severely
limited him in two others, Bethune-Cookman is poised to pick
up where it left off a year ago. They are the favored pick to repeat
as MEAC champions and No. 1 in the Black College Sports
Page preseason ranking.
However, the Wildcats aren't putting much stock in preseason predictions. They're No.1 concern is how they'll stand at the end of the season.
"Preseason polls don't really mean much," Suber says. "People respect what we did last year. But it's how you finish. You have to line up and play."
With 16 starters returning, eight on offense and eight on defense, the Wildcats are confident that they can line up and play with anybody. There is one problem area, however. That along the offensive line, where All-American Napoleon Joseph has graduated and projected starters Patrick Worsham, a tackle who transferred from Duke, and Fred Nolan, a guard who transferred from Louisville were injured during preseason practice. Worsham is out for the season and Nolan is expected to miss the first two games.
"I'm hurting right now," says Wildcats coach Alvin Wyatt. "It's what's up front that counts. Right now we don't have it up front. We're hoping these guys will come around and get it together so Allen can last the whole season. He's 100% healthy. It's too bad we don't have the offensive line to complement him like in the past. That's one of the biggest hurdles we're going to have to overcome if we're going to have any success."
Suber was the MEAC Offensive Player of the Year last season as he rushed for 1,035 yards and
15 touchdowns and passed for 1,307 yards and eight touchdowns. He is confident that his offense line
will perform well enough to allow him to operate
much the same as he did last season.
"We'll be alright," he says. "Your two mainstay positions are center and left tackle. Both starters are back at those positions (Julius Franklin and Tyrone Sapp), and the others have played. We don't have any true freshmen."
As good as Suber is, he won't have to be a one-man show as the Wildcats also return their top two running backs, Brad Lee (584 yards, 5.4 yards a carry) and Rodney Johnson (473 yards, 7.0 yards a carry). Unri Thomas, a big-play receiver who averaged 31.1 yards a catch last year, and Patrick Brown, who was the second-leading receiver with 16 catches, will be Suber's favorite targets.
"We're going to try to make sure that offensively we're care-takers of the football, that we don't fumble and don't throw interceptions and put our defense in bad situations," Wyatt says.
Senior Steve Baggs is considered one of the top defensive ends in I-AA and anchors the Wildcats' defense. He needs 20 sacks this season to break the school career record.
Even though the Wildcats' defense will be without safety Rashean Mathis (14 interceptions), the Buck Buchanan Award winner as the top defensive player in I-AA, Bethune-Cookman shouldn't suffer a drop-off after being among the best in the nation last season.
"As a team we can put up those same numbers even without Mathis," says Wyatt.
The Wildcats' success last season and the high expectations everyone has for them this season could be the formula for disaster if complacency sets in.
"If you take anybody for granted, you're going to be in for a rude awakening," says Wyatt. "I wouldn't care if I was playing Mom Mary's Mission or Fork & Spoon University, our kids are always going to be ready and up for the challenge. If we can get our offensive line to come around and don't sustain any serious injuries, we're going to be tough. We're going to be very competitive. That's all I can ask from them, to compete and compete at a high level."
© 2003 Azeez Communications, Inc.