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Livingstone football coach Greg Richardson gathered his troops on Monday and told them the news. Winston-Salem State had decided that the winless Bears were the perfect opponent for their Homecoming, which explains why the game has been moved from its original 6 p.m. to 2 p.m.
“A roar went up from the whole team when they heard that,” said a smiling Richardson. “That was one of the loudest cheers of the year from our guys.”
The Bears’ rivalry with Winston-Salem State, located less than an hour away, is apparently still alive and well.
“I definitely think it is,” said Richardson. “This is a very big game for our young men.”
In many ways it’s backs-to-the-wall time for the Bears. At 0-5 and twist-of-fate losers each of the past two weeks, a loss Saturday will doom them to a losing season. But no one in the Bears’ camp has started to accept losing. Progress — sometimes slow and painful, to be sure — is coming every week. Livingstone was a weak and wounded team when the year began with one-sided losses to Catawba and Tusculum. But these days, the Bears are healthy — and dangerous. They’ve been very competitive in three straight league games.
Mercurial Carl Jones, sidelined early in the season, took a simple option pitch and turned it into a 96-yard touchdown last Saturday when the Bears dropped a 23-20 road heartbreaker to talented Virginia State. Now speed merchant Shannon Gainey, down with a hamstring pull for weeks, is back to catch some passes. Quarterback D’andre Hopper is looking like his old self, running Richardson’s option attack with aplomb. And the defense, with linebacker Jason Ocean and safety Denotrico Nash emerging as stars, is improving by the hour.
“We’re sure not as sorry as people say we are,” said Jones, the CIAA’s No. 4 rusher. “ I don’t think 0-5 speaks for this team. We’re getting there. We’re scoring more points every week. The defense is playing better. We’ve just got to cut the turnovers and do better when we get in the red zone”
Richardson agrees with Jones that the Bears are on the verge of good things.
“The kids believe now that we can move the ball and that we can move it inside or outside on people,” he said. “We just have to put it all together for a win.”
Winston-Salem is not the ideal team to be playing when you’re hungry for a win. The Rams are talented. You might remember they head-butted Livingstone 34-0 a year ago. This season, they’re 4-1 and look exactly like the title contenders that were cracked up to be in preseason. And Richardson warns, given the nature of the rivalry and the Bears’ recent strides, that there’s no way Rams coach Kermit Blount is going to overlook Livingstone.
“I think Kermit’s way too smart for that,” said Richardson. “Besides, he’s got two sets of film showing him that we’ve run the ball for 300-plus yards and 277 yards the last two weeks. They’ll be ready.”
The Rams star quarterback, Tory Woodbury broke the school career passing mark (previously held by Blount) recently. The CIAA Back of the Week ran for three TDs and passed for another in the Rams’ 28-14 win over Fayetteville last week. The previous week, he lit up Virginia Union for four more scores. Fortunately, Livingstone’s defense, which held Virginia State’s league-leading offense to reasonable numbers, may be ready to respond to the challenge of knocking on Woodbury.
“What we have to do No. 1 is stop their running game,” said Richardson. “Woodbury’s a passing threat, but his passes come mostly off play-action.”
The Bears, eight of whom are Winston-Salem natives, say they are fired up.
“We look at every game as a big game,” said defensive lineman O’Brian Scott. “We prepare hard every week. But this one would really be big.”
If the Bears pull this one off, Richardson will hear an even louder cheer than the one he heard on Monday.
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