Running on a few hours of rest and recovering from late-night travel after Saturday's 28-21 loss at Georgia Southern, Arkansas State University Coach Blake Anderson flew from Jonesboro to speak to the Little Rock Touchdown Club on Monday afternoon for the fifth time.
The coach highlighted plenty of what ASU achieved through the first four games of its season -- the best start to a season in the past decade at 3-1. Standing before a room of school administrators, donors and loyalists donning ASU's scarlet red and black, Anderson then articulated how ASU was stunned in its first Sun Belt Conference game in Statesboro, Ga., on Saturday.
Mistakes, he said, doomed the Red Wolves, but their focus must shift to a midweek showdown with Appalachian State looming.
Anderson's two-hour trip to Little Rock begins an unusual "bye" week for the Red Wolves (3-2, 0-1 Sun Belt).
In seven days, the Red Wolves will host Appalachian State (3-1, 1-0) in Jonesboro.
ASU will practice normally today and Wednesday before an off day Thursday, which will be focused on healing lingering injuries and rest. The Red Wolves will go through a normal game week of prep Friday-Monday before next Tuesday's 7 p.m. kickoff at Centennial Bank Stadium.
The Red Wolves, for once, will watch football on a Saturday.
"They'll get the chance to at least enjoy everybody else playing," Anderson said. "But we're still going to have work to do that morning."
As for the ramifications of Saturday's loss and next Tuesday's result, neither Appalachian State nor Georgia Southern reside in the West Division of the Sun Belt with ASU, so Saturday's loss is not devastating.
But it matters.
These nondivision games still can ruin ASU's chance of hosting the inaugural Sun Belt Championship Game on Dec. 1. The league's divisional winner with the best overall conference winning percentage is set to host.
"Honestly, with the way the division's set up, you better make sure you take care of your head-to-head games in your side of the division -- but they're all important," Anderson said. "We need to win as many of them as we can. Hopefully we can rally and win the rest of them."
ASU's next two games -- Tuesday, Oct. 9, and Thursday, Oct. 18, against Georgia State -- create consecutive weeks with two extra days of prep. The Red Wolves' off week -- or weeks -- is nontraditional.
"We've got some beat-up guys that need to get healthy," Anderson said. "We're out an open week, so this is about all we're going to get, and we've got to utilize the extra few days."
Sports on 10/02/2018