Homecoming Victory!

Thanks to a stingy defense that forced six West Virginia Tech turnovers and a surpris­ingly good kicking game that produced four field goals, the Eagles beat WVTU 26-15 to win back-to-back games for the first time in school history.
"We knew early on that if we were going to win this game, it was going to be up to our de­fense," Faulkner head coach Jim Nichols said. "Those guys played a great game. We chal­lenged them and they respond­ed. Our offense was really strug­gling, especially in the second half, but our D just refused to give up anything."
It didn't hurt that the WVTU offense seemed rather de­termined to give up everything.
Following the first Faulkner field goal of the day -- a 36-yarder from sophomore Paul Cink -- the Golden Bears re­sponded with a balanced rush­ing and passing attack that al­lowed them to go 59 yards in nine plays to grab the lead. Quarterback Michael Scott passed to Patrick Evans for the eight-yard score to put WVTU up 7-3 with 9:15 to go in the first quarter.
On that drive, the Golden Bears picked up 31 yards on four pass plays and ran five times for 28 yards.
"They really hurt us mixing it up on the first drive," Nichols said. "We were scrambling around to make adjustments."
There was no reason to fret.
Not counting sacks, WVTU attempted just 10 more running plays the rest of the game and gained just 15 more yards on the ground. Add in Faulkner's three sacks and the Golden Bears to­taled just eight yards on 18 car­ries.
"The idea after that first drive was that we were going to put as many men as possible in the box and stuff the run," Faulkner linebacker Sean Thom said. "If they didn't run it, we went after the quarterback. It was a surprise that they stopped trying to run it so quick, though."
But they did.
The Golden Bears allowed Scott to attempt 60 passes in the game. He completed just 31 of them. And threw five to Faulkn­er.
Of Scott's five interceptions, three came on the first play of drives. A fourth came on the sec­ond play of a drive. And his fifth ended a possible go-ahead drive when he was picked off in the end zone near the end of the third quarter.
Faulkner, in the meantime, was having problems of its own with turnovers. Eagles quarter­back Philip Moore was picked off three times in the game -- all of them coming in the second half. In one four-series stretch in the second half, Moore threw three picks and was whistled for intentional grounding in his end zone for a safety.
"We couldn't do anything of­fensively there in the second half," Nichols said. "With the defense playing so well, I got to a point where I didn't mind. We were playing it safe and relying on our D."
The one thing Faulkner did have going for it was a hot kick­ing game. After the early field goal from Cink, sophomore Jared Corder, who Nichols said has the strongest leg on the team, came on to knock through three more.
Corder's first field goal -- a 42-yarder midway through the second quarter - came just 28 seconds after a Moore one-yard TD run put the Eagles up 10-7. Corder also hit from 36 and 27 yards and Faulkner led 19-7 with 8:51 to go in the third quarter.
"You have to get points when you have an opportunity," Nich­ols said. "We've struggled with that this season, but I was proud of those guys today. They really came through and, I think, helped us maintain some mo­mentum."
The Golden Bears grabbed some of that momentum back with just under six minutes to play in the third, when Scott hooked up with Murvin John­son on a seven-yard TD play. Moore's grounding penalty and safety came on Faulkner's ensu­ing drive, allowing WVTU to pull within four with 3:51 to play in the third.
But again, the Eagles' de­fense came through.
The Golden Bears drove to the Faulkner 14 and were facing a fourth and six. Scott attempted to loft a pass into the corner of the end zone, but defensive back Q Brasswell got in front of his man and made the interception.
Faulkner tacked on a late TD when Moore hooked up with Mike Timmons on a 36-yard screen play with 6:47 to go.
"This was big for us, espe­cially for our defense," Thom said. "We've been talking a lot about doing things right and we finally put it all together here to­day. It really felt good to play that way."*Kicking it: Coming into Satur­day's game with West Virginia Tech, Faulkner was ranked sec­ond to last in the Mid-South Conference in field goal kicking. The Eagles had hit just 3 of their 8 attempts, with the longest coming from 27 yards.
Saturday's tally: 4-for-4, in­cluding a 42-yarder and two 36-yarders.
Asked if he was surprised by the sudden accuracy of sopho­more kickers Paul Cink and Jared Corder, Nichols was said he knew it was just a matter of time.
"We know their abilities," Nichols said. "This was just the first time in six weeks that we haven't had any wind to deal with. I'm serious about that. That's been the problem. These guys were kicking in 15 and 20-mile-per-hour winds every time out."
Whatever prompted the im­provements, they were game-changing for Faulkner.
Instead of being stuck going for it on fourth and long inside an opponent's 30-yard line, the Eagles got points.
If the importance of that was ever questioned, all it took was a look to the opposite sideline, where WVTU, which came in 0-for-8 on FG tries, was forced to go for it on four fourth-and-long plays in Faulkner territory.
The Golden Bears didn't con­vert any of them.*Still hitting: Junior linebacker Sean Thom came into Saturday's game as the leading tackler in NAIA play, with 118 total tackles through eight games. That's an average of just over 14 tackles per game.
Thom did nothing to hurt that average against WVTU, as he racked up 17 total tackles, in­cluding seven solo stops.
"He's just got a knack for al­ways being around the ball," Nichols said. "I think it's because he's so smart. He's a 4.0 student and he's very quick. You just ex­pect him to be around the ball on every play."*Firsts: With a second-year foot­ball program, the firsts come rather easily. Saturday's win gave Faulkner its first two-game winning streak and was the Ea­gles' first official win at home. (They beat Kentucky Christian at Cramton Bowl last season, but the NAIA doesn't recognize it as an official game.)
Faulkner also won its first homecoming game and set re­cords for interceptions, total takeaways in a game and field goals. Jared Corder's 42-yard field goal was also a career and program long.

Article by Josh Moon/The Montgomery Advertiser/Nov.2nd, 2008