As a towel-draped center Raymond Harrison walked back to his locker at Bright House Networks Stadium, one of his South Carolina State teammates shook his hand.

It was a Bulldog defensive player who offered some encouragement following Saturday’s 17-0 loss to Central Florida. Given the anemic showing of the offense (124 total yards) and how the defense singlehandedly kept S.C. State in the contest, a less conciliatory greeting could have been expected.

If there’s one trademark about the Bulldogs under head coach Oliver “Buddy” Pough, it’s the belief in winning and losing as a team.

Fingerpointing is not an option even when it’s evident that one side of the football performed better than the other.

“We’re a team,” Pough said. “When you come into a situation like this, I think the defense is satisfied with the fact that they at least gave us a chance. We’ve just got to figure out a way to get our offense going. I think they understand we’re working at it and we’ll get better at it.”

Even what some on the outside would perceive as veiled criticism was coupled with optimism.

“We played good enough to win,” defensive back Markee Hamlin said.

“Our offense has to do better. We’re young right now on offense, but we’ll get it together.”

This was supposed to be the start of a spectacular offensive era in S.C. State football. With highly touted Malcolm Long at quarterback ready to lead and an offense which returns the preseason Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Offensive Player of the Year running back Will Ford, it would be a seamless transition from the Cleveland McCoy era.

Instead, the Bulldog offense showed its youth against the physical, more experienced Knights’ defensive line. The team was unable to once again play turnover-free football against a Football Bowl Subdivision team (eight turnovers in three such games for S.C. State) and were held to just five first downs.

For that, the Bulldogs gave credit where credit was due.

“UCF’s got a pretty good team,” defensive lineman Keyon Brooks said.

“They’ve got a pretty good team. They’ve got a pretty good scheme going on, but we could have done better. But our marbles didn’t all add up at the end of the fourth quarter.”

“I didn’t think we played awful on offense,” Pough said. “We’re just not that good enough on offense. Until that happens, we’ll struggle, especially against a team like this because UCF’s defense is pretty good.”

At the same time, the defense gave up two big passing plays by Michael Greco to Rocky Ross which ultimately led to 10 Central Florida points.

It’s something Brooks acknowledged following the game and why the focus in the S.C. State lockerroom was more toward looking ahead to Week Two against Benedict College rather than dwelling on what happened.

“Our offense is going to do better,” Brooks said. “I respect what they have going on. We’re real young on the offensive side of the ball.

“They’re going to come along. They’re going to come along and understand the situation they have to put us in.

“We’ve got 11 more games to play so right now this is a lesson learned for us to let us know what we’re weak in and what we’re strong at and pick up from there.”

n T&D Senior Sports Writer Thomas Grant Jr. can be reached by e-mail at tgrant@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5547.

 

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