There’s something about the Tidewater area and “trap games” this season for South Carolina State.

It was Norfolk State who posed a challenge to the Bulldogs prior to last weekend’s Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference showdown with Florida A&M. S.C. State got off to a quick start en route to a 37-10 victory.

Fresh off a critical 35-20 victory over the previously 22nd-ranked Rattlers, the Bulldogs are headed back to Virginia on Saturday. This time, they face a Hampton team who’s holding “Homecoming” at Armstrong Stadium, where the Bulldogs had never won a game until two years ago. Hampton is coming off a 44-6 drubbing by the crosstown rival Spartans.

As surprised as S.C. State head football coach Oliver “Buddy” Pough was of that outcome, he believes the Pirates will be more ready to right their ship at his team’s expense.

“We expect their ‘A’ game again,” he said during Monday’s press conference. “As bad as they played last week, they’ll probably play as good as they could play this week. So it’ll be interesting to see how they’re going to get it done because they’re going to have to have a good week of practice.”

Pough wants to see the Bulldogs (5-1, 3-0) put together a second half as good as they played in the first half against Florida A&M. In fact, S.C. State is outscoring opponents 114-35 in the first half, but only 77-57 in the second half.

What more concerns Pough is doing his part to avoid a “letdown” following one of the biggest home wins during his tenure.

“We’ll continue to do what we do as best we can,” he said. “Our primary objective is to play the best we can. We’ve said that a bunch of times. It’s not all trying to decide if it’s a win situation or a lose situation. It’s more about us trying to maximize our ability to try to do the very best we can. If that’s the case, we’ll go into this game, and continue to play well.

On both the offensive and defensive lines, S.C. State has seen the two young groups make major strides. Since Pough challenged them four weeks ago, the offensive line has allowed just one sack and the passing and running game has continued to flourish.

Defensively, the up-front play held the Rattlers to 35 rushing yards and collected three sacks with Jayson Ayers and redshirt freshmen Arnett James and Antuanne Kerr making plays in the absence of Hampton native Markus James.

“That’s been a pleasing sight to see those young guys to come along like they’ve had,” Pough said. “Arnett James is starting to play a good bit for us and it looks like he’s going to be a good player for us. You get some of those other guys who we can get in there -- the (Dyrell) Porchas of the world. The best thing about having defensive linemen is you get a chance to roll those guys in a way where you can keep them fresh in a game and it may be the toughest position of all the positions conditioning-wise. You just expend so much energy rushing the passer, a lot more energy you spend protecting the passer on offense. So, you need a bunch of them and we’ve got to have them.”

Saturday’s game features a match-up of the two leading rushers in the MEAC. Running back Will Ford posted his second, 100-plus-yard game this season in becoming the school’s all-time leading rusher and second on the MEAC career rushing list. He goes to Hampton needing 495 yards to surpass former Pirate running back Alonzo Coleman for number one.

Ironically, it’s another Hampton running back who holds the MEAC rushing lead over Ford. University of Tennessee transfer LaMarcus Coker has rushed 614 yards on 105 carries. Coupled with his 233 kick-return yards and 116 receiving yards, that makes him the MEAC leader in all-purpose yards.

“I watched him last night a good bit and he’s really good,” Pough said. “He’s fast. He’s big. They do all kinds of things to get him the football. They’re pretty good up front on the offensive line. That’s why it’s so unusual they had the game that they had because if you can run the football, you generally think that’s a cure-all to keep people from at least blowing you out. But, somehow or another, they managed to get into the situation they were in. But I’ll tell you what. Coker is a real good player.”

S.C. State has won the last three meetings against Hampton, including last year’s 35-13 rout at home, a game that propelled the Bulldogs to the MEAC championship. With three of the remaining four conference games after Saturday at Oliver C. Dawson Stadium, a victory over the Pirates (3-3, 2-2) could put the Bulldogs in the driver’s seat again.

“The fact that we have most of our games left at home, it’ll be interesting to see how we play this week because this is our next big tough road game. It would be a big deal for us to get over this last one.”

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. Discuss this and other stories on-line at TheTandD.com.

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