Reinforced ASU aiming for Dallas

NEW ORLEANS — The symmetry wasn’t lost on Arkansas State senior safety Cody Brown.

Teammate Jemar Clark, Coach Blake Anderson and Brown rolled Monday afternoon into the Superdome on Monday afternoon to unofficially kick off the 2016 season at the Sun Belt Conference’s media day event.

Not far from the interview rooms at the Superdome arena in which the Red Wolves sputtered through a disappointing end to 2015.

Injuries and penalties contributed to ASU’s 47-28 loss to Louisiana Tech in the New Orleans Bowl after the Red Wolves had won eight consecutive games and their fourth Sun Belt title in five years.

“When I heard we were coming to New Orleans,” Brown said, “I had kind of a bad taste in my mouth. Injuries. The first half we had maybe five people go down. It was pretty bad.”

Seven months later, ASU is poised to start Anderson’s third year as coach healthy and considered a contender for the Sun Belt title race again. The Red Wolves weren’t picked in a poll of league coaches to win the league, but received five first-place votes and placed 11 players on the two all-Sun Belt teams, the most of any team.

ASU was one of the main talking points Monday, even by coaches of teams that don’t show up on its schedule.

“I’m not sorry we’re not playing them this year,” said Scott Satterfield, coach of preseason favorite Appalachian State. “It’s a blessing.”

Expectations from others is rooted in what the Red Wolves have returning. Clark and Brown were two of eight first-team all-Sun Belt picks for ASU, as it returns 13 starters from a team that scored a Sun Belt record 520 points and forced a Sun Belt-high 34 turnovers.

But Anderson’s biggest source of excitement revolves around as many as five players who were either not on the roster or who were sitting out per NCAA transfer rules a year ago. It’s a group that includes two quarterbacks, two receivers and a defensive tackle, and they all could play significant roles this season. .

Justice Hansen, who began his career at Oklahoma and transferred to ASU from Butler County (Kan.) Community College and Chad Voytik, a graduate transfer from Pittsburgh, will be among four competing for the quarterback job. Receivers Cameron Echols-Luper, who transferred from TCU, and Kendall Sanders, who transferred from Texas, and defensive tackle Dee Liner, who came from Alabama, all figure to help fill the void of those departed.

“It’s a really fun team to look at on paper,” Anderson said. “Are they going to play like they look on paper? Are we going to be able to put it all together? There’s been a lot of really talented teams not perform well. We don’t want to be that team. We want to be the talented football team that can play up to that ability level. That’s when you have something special.”

The influx of transfers adds to a group of returners that include running backs Johnston White and Warren Wand, who combined to rush for 1,323 yards and 10 touchdowns last season, 6 offensive linemen who have started games and 9 returning starters on defense.

All the talent and experience has Anderson looking at a Sun Belt title and maybe more.

The highest-ranked team from the Group of Five conferences earns an invite to the Cotton Bowl this season, and Anderson said he doesn’t think there’s any harm in expressing his desire for ASU to go there.

“Why not us? Why not this year?” he said. “If we don’t shoot for it and we don’t prepare for it and we don’t talk about it being possible, I don’t see us getting there. It’s got to be something that we think is there.”

Remembering ASU’s 47-28 loss in the New Orleans bowl last December is one way to guard against too much confidence, especially after Louisiana Tech outscored ASU 30-11 in the second half.

“I didn’t enjoy that too well,” said Clark, who was forced to watch from the sideline while nursing a shoulder that was operated on after the bowl game.

Clark, a senior from McCrory, said he’s the most healthy he’s been in two years, and if an offensive line loaded with experience can stay healthy, he’s confident a quarterback will eventually rise to the top.

“I feel like we can be just as good or better on offense as we were last year,” he said.

Anderson said he won’t mind if the season ends like it did last year, with a December trip to the New Orleans Bowl. But, considering what he thinks of the roster, he’s not limiting expectations.

“We would have absolutely no problem coming back to New Orleans to try to win a game instead of just showing up for one,” he said. “But we haven’t set anything as a destination, except finding a way to win on Sept. 2, then hoping at the end of the year we’re the team that’s the highest ranked to go to the Cotton Bowl. Those are really the only two things we’ve talked about.”