Another game against a top-25 opponent with an unblemished conference record is staring down at Fort Lewis College, but this time the Skyhawks are at home.
After losing trips to No. 6 CSU-Pueblo and No. 7 Colorado Mines in consecutive weeks, the FLC Skyhawks football team has returned home with a 4-3 overall record and 3-2 showing in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.
The challenge doesn’t get much easier to cap off a difficult three-week stretch, as the Skyhawks are set to welcome No. 23 Colorado Mesa (6-1, 5-0 RMAC) at noon Saturday to Ray Dennison Memorial Field in Durango, where FLC is 3-0 this season.
“We’ve started to develop something at home,” FLC third-year head coach John L. Smith said Friday in a phone interview with The Durango Herald. “It’s our turf and we’re trying to establish that teams won’t come in and beat us. We have to protect that, and we’ve expressed to our guys the importance of it. Hopefully they take it to heart and come to the field ready to defend our turf.”
The Mavericks will bring the leagues stingiest defense to date with a group that has allowed a conference-low 12.4 points per game. Colorado Mesa also has four defensive touchdowns this year thanks largely to 16 interceptions, including four last week against Western New Mexico. Those 16 interceptions rank second in all of NCAA Division II behind only Henderson State’s 18.
Overall, Colorado Mesa has forced 22 turnovers, eighth most in the country. And it doesn’t turn the ball over much, either, ranking second nationally in turnover margin.
“We’ve been trying to have the guys on scout team strip at the ball and do all that in practice this week,” Smith said. “These guys are really going to go after the ball. They do a great job turning it over, so we have to do a great job securing it.”
FLC prides itself in special teams and the play of return man Juquelle Thompson. The senior wide receiver is a force in kick and punt returns, and he leads the RMAC in kickoff return average at 21.1 yards.
But, when it comes to receiving punts, Mesa boasts the second-best man in the nation in Dustin Rivas, who has averaged 20.9 yards per punt return.
“We’ve tried to identify those guys with good return specialists back there and kick the ball away from them all year,” Smith said. “A year ago, they pressured us on every punt we had. I expect them to come after us, so we have to do a good job protecting it and getting it out.”
Tom Saager has been a force defensively for Colorado Mesa. He averages 10.6 tackles per game, including 5.9 solo. Both of those numbers rank second in the RMAC. Blake Nelson also ranks second in the league in tackles for loss per game at 1.4 and is fifth in sacks, averaging 0.64.
Finding points after reaching the red zone will be key for the Skyhawks. Mesa’s opponents have crossed the 20-yard line 22 times this season and have scored only four touchdowns and nine field goals.
FLC quarterback Jordan Doyle is coming off the best individual game of his season when he ran for three touchdowns, passed for another and accumulated 249 passing yards in a 48-28 loss to Colorado Mines. The game was tied at 28 early in the third quarter before the Orediggers took control.
Doyle and the Skyhawks were successful against the Mavericks in a 28-20 win in Grand Junction a year ago. But that was the same game Doyle sustained a broken leg that ended his season.
Starting every game this year, Doyle has led FLC to the league’s fifth-best scoring offense at 31.9 points per game.
Despite a pair of tough weeks, sophomore running back PJ Hall still averages nearly 100 yards per game for the Skyhawks at 98.8. He has rushed for 695 yards this season and had five rushing scores. In home games this season, Hall has rushed for 121, 120 and 190 yards and three touchdowns.
What Smith believes makes the Mavericks better than a year ago is the play of transfer quarterback Sean Rubalcaba, a Grand Junction native who returned to his hometown after spending time at Northern Colorado.
He has 12 touchdowns to 3 interceptions this season and has added three rushing scores. He has more than 1,300 yards of total offense this season.
“They have two good running backs, a smaller, quick guy and a bigger guy,” Smith said. “But the difference this year compared to a year ago is the quarterback they had come in. He’s a very good football player.”
Colorado Mesa leads the all-time series 29-11-1 and is 5-13-1 against the Skyhawks on the road. FLC will look to make it two wins in a row against the Mavericks on Saturday.
Smith hopes a week of poor practices caused by sloppy weather in the area won’t show in the team’s performance Saturday.
“It was a tough week. We got nothing done Tuesday because of lightning, and (Thursday) was a mess,” he said. “We’ll go out and play decently, but it was not a good week of practice.”
jlivingston@durangoherald.com
