FSU will honor 9 seniors before completing season against Virginia Union
FAYETTEVILLE, NC – Some of them, Kenny Phillips has known for almost a quarter of their lives.
On Saturday, he will watch them play their final college football game at Fayetteville State.
The regular season finale in front of a home crowd at Luther “Nick” Jeralds Stadium on Saturday will be the last for nine Broncos’ seniors, among them standouts like Richard Medlin (Raleigh, NC), Dillon Kestner (Durham, NC) and John Hicks (Wilmington, NC). They are twentysomething players who have invested five years of their lives as part of Phillips’ program at Fayetteville State.
And before the game kicks off at 1 p.m. against Virginia Union to close out the 2010 football season, Phillips can’t help but reflect on what those players used to be – or how far they’ve come. And not just as football players.
“When you have guys who came in as freshmen and fought their way through college for four or five years, that’s special to them within themselves,” says Phillips, “because now they’re looking at the ultimate goals they set forth when they came to college, and that’s to get their college degree.”
“What you see when you bring these young men in is they are a little wet behind the ears. They’re not mature, and what you get to watch is these guys grow into young men, mature, and get ready to go out and be functional in the world.”
Of course, there is football to be played as well. And the Broncos (4-5, 3-3) have a chance to finish at least .500 or better for the eighth time in Phillips’ 11 years as head coach. A victory would give Fayetteville State its first three-game winning streak of the season and would complete a staggering turnaround in the second half of the season with four wins in the final five games.
Such a finish would go a long way into making the offseason a lot more tolerable.
“It’s hard to say you can build the successes toward 2011, but it would give us a lot of momentum going into our offseason workout program and into spring football,” Phillips says.
It’ll be a difficult task, though – much more difficult than either of the last two wins have been. In crushing victories over Livingstone and Johnson C. Smith, the Broncos have outscored their opponents 123-12 and have outgained them 911-417. Fayetteville State’s 534 yards of total offense in last week’s 64-6 win alone outdid its last two opponents.
But Virginia Union (3-6, 3-4) is a far different team. The Panthers lost two games on the road by one point – at Bowie State and at Chowan in successive weeks – and fell by only three points at Elizabeth City State following those two one-point defeats.
“If that ball bounces another way, they might be sitting in a situation where they might be in the running for the championship game,” Phillips says of Virginia Union. “Last year, they lost an opportunity to go to the championship on a coin flip, so you’re looking at a team that’s not very far from where they were a year ago.
“It’s a football team that’s going to be a lot better than the last two football teams we’ve played here.”
But the Broncos have been peaking. Robert Benjamin (Jr., Phoenix, AZ) is coming off a career game in which he threw for three touchdowns and ran for three others. He passed for 170 yards in completing 71 percent of his passes, spreading the ball around seven different receivers, and rushed for 108 yards on just 11 carries.
“He’s more comfortable with the offensive line, and he has a feel for where the weaknesses are in the offensive line and where he’s going to get pressure from before the ball is even snapped,” Phillips says of Benjamin. “At the middle of the season, he didn’t have that comfort in the pocket.
“When you have a quarterback with his kind of IQ who’s willing to put the work in, you’re going to have a pretty good product on the field. That’s what put him head and shoulders above some guys in the league.”
But against a Virginia Union team that boasts tremendous size on the defensive interior and great athleticism throughout, Benjamin and the Broncos will have to remain on point.
“I think (last week’s game) was close to his best game,” Phillips says of Benjamin. “He seems to get better every week, and we’re going to need him to be a lot better this week than he was last week because of the football team we’re playing. We need him to step up his game even more. A lot of people might say, ‘Well, can he do that?’ Yes, he can.”
And the Broncos’ defense will have to remain as stingy as it has been in the second half of the season. Fellow senior Jeremy Cunningham (Casa Grande, AZ) ranks first in the CIAA and ninth in the NCAA in tackles, and no doubt he and fellow senior linebacker Kavarius Walker (Miami, FL) will be keying on Panthers quarterback Chester Hickman (627 yards, 6 TDs), who’s taken over the starter’s role, and running back Jerell Washington (123-702 yards, 8 TDs).
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