Livingstone’s defending CIAA champions have been virtually eliminated from winning a third straight title, but the Bears are still aiming for a strong finish.

Coach Greg Richardson’s club stands 2-4 overall and 1-3 in the CIAA (eighth place) with five games to play.

Offensively, Livingstone ranks second in the conference in total offense (341.5 yards per game), second in rushing offense (220.8) and fourth in passing offense (120.7), but the Bears have still struggled to get the ball into the end zone in most games. Livingstone is averaging only 15.7 points per game.

Defensively, Livingstone ranks third in total yardage allowed (291.3 per game), but the Bears have yielded 20.3 points per contest, including 34 in Saturday’s shutout defeat at the hands of Winston-Salem State.

Quarterback D’Andre Hopper, who ranks second in the CIAA in total offense (193.7 yards per game), third in passing yardage (118.3 average) and fourth in rushing yardage (75.3 average), thinks the offensive unit needs to be more consistent all week.

“I think we need to work harder at the first part of the week instead of at the end of the week. We have a good practice at the end of the week, then come out here on Saturdays and look all sluggish. I think we need to have a good practice all week long and just get to the point of attack a lot faster,” said the junior from Shelby.

He still thinks the passing game can improve.

“It all starts with the offensive line. I have confidence in myself that I can get the ball to our wideouts, and I also have confidence in our wideouts. I have confidence in my offensive line, but it’s just that once we make a good play, they give up, just like they’re laid back. That’s when the defense starts pounding,” he said.

Livingstone lost all its starting offensive lineman off last year’s championship team, so that’s where the Bears are the youngest and most inexperienced.

“I feel like, since we have a young line and we look at films during the week, they see how we thrashed teams last year. They think that we can just get on the field and they’re going to lay down for us. It’s not like that. We tell them time and time again, ‘No one’s going to lay down for us.’ Now that we have a losing record, it’s going to be even harder to get back on top.”

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YOUTH ON DEFENSE: The Bears also have some inexperience on the defensive side of the football.

“I think right now we’re just young. At a lot of key positions, we have freshmen,” said senior linebacker Ronnie Washburn, the 1998 CIAA defensive player of the year. “You’ve got to grow up, but at the same time, you’ve got to learn.”

The 6-foot-3, 275-pound Shelby native is having another solid season with a CIAA-leading 6.5 sacks. He ranks second in the league in tackles for losses with 13 for 59 yards. Overall, he’s had 17 unassisted tackles with 19 assists.

“I think sometimes the guys aren’t quite as aggressive as they should be. I think that’s one of our problems,” said Washburn, one of the league’s most aggressive hitters.

He admits he’s frustrated with the way the season has gone, but adds, “I’m not giving up. We’ll keep the fight going.Let’s just hope we kind of pull it together and come out with a winning season.”

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NOT EXECUTING: Coach Greg Richardson said, after the loss to Winston-Salem, “We’re very disappointed for our players and our coaches. We put a lot of time into preparing for that game, and we just didn’t follow our game plan the way we thought it should have been done. Of course, that’s on us as coaches. Also, of course, it’s all a matter of execution, and right now offensively we’re just not executing the way we should be executing.”

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IN RED ZONE: The Livingstone coach feels the Bears’ offense is doing fine until getting inside the opponents’ 20-yard line.

“I think the offense is very sound. Even in this game, we were able to get in the red zone four times, so it wasn’t a matter of whether they could stop us or not. We basically stopped ourselves with a lack of execution on key plays in key situations. We just don’t seem to be able cross that bridge between success and failure,” said Richardson.

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TRADITIONAL GAME: Livingstone travels to Charlotte’s Memorial Stadium on Saturday to meet long-time rival Johnson C. Smith (1-2, 1-5) at 6 p.m.

Livingstone and J.C. Smith (then Biddle) first met on Dec. 27, 1892 on the Livingstone campus in the first football game ever played between black colleges. J.C. Smith won 5-0.