No traps for JC Smith ahead of football playoff debut

MATT LACZKO | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Johnson C. Smith coach Maurice Flowers compares Frostburg State to Valdosta State, which the Golden Bulls beat Sept. 6 in Charlotte. Both opponents are physical on both sides of the ball and balanced on offense.

Frostburg State has Johnson C. Smith’s attention.

The 10-1 Golden Bulls, who play the Bobcats in the opening round of the Division II tournament Saturday at McGirt Field, can’t look past them for a potential third meeting against CIAA rival Virginia Union, who they beat 45-21 for the conference title. To advance, JCSU, the No. 2 seed in Super Region 1, must deal with seventh seed FSU (9-2), the Mountain East Conference co-champion. 

“Not a chance about this being a trap game,” Golden Bulls coach Maurice Flowers said. “Our entire focus is on Frostburg State. The first day the bracket came out, of course, you see the whole bracket. We did our selection show gathering, and we saw that Virginia Union was there. That’s all we did was see it. There’s been no talk of it in our coaching staff and in coaching staff meetings within the team. … All our focus is on Frostburg State, because there is no game with Union if we don’t handle this one.”

Frostburg State, ranked 24th in the nation, shares similar traits to No. 11 JCSU. Both have balanced offenses that average 32.5 (FSU) and 36.0 (JCSU) points per game and defenses ranked in the top 22 in the country. They share another attribute – physicality on both sides of the ball.

The Bobcats are “not as big as Valdosta State (a playoff team JCSU beat 28-16 on Sept. 6), but a very big team,” Flowers said. “I would say they were similar. They have similarities of a couple of years ago when Walsh (Ohio) came here, and Walsh was a big, physical football team, and this team is a much better Walsh-type of team, and we lost the Walsh I'll add. We know we’ve got our work cut out for us, (against) a very, very good football team, well coached, 9-2 football team, a champion, so you know they know how to fight for four quarters, and they know how to respond to adversity.”

The Golden Bulls’ CIAA run not only galvanized JCSU’s campus but alumni support along the East Coast. To accommodate an expected bump in ticket demand to match the turnout for last week’s conference title game, temporary seating have been added at McGirt Field 

“We had fans coming from a lot of different places,” Flowers said. “I was told buses came from New York, New Jersey, D.C. area; alumni buses came, but we know a large part of that crowd was from Charlotte, and those fans now make the short trip down here to Summit [Avenue]. We would expect a good crowd. I would really expect us to be something close to a sellout, if not a sellout.”

Notes

• On the injury front, JCSU linebacker Quavaris Crouch (Harding High) will be active Saturday after missing the last three games. Crouch is eighth in tackles among Golden Bulls with 24 (18 solo, 2.5 for loss) and a pair of sacks.

• Football won’t be the only competition on campus. Saturday is also the final day of the Tip-Off Classic at Brayboy Gym where the Golden Bulls basketball team plays Morris (S.C.) College at 4 p.m. Flowers, who played basketball as well as football at JCSU, is mindful of the impact winning can have on campus.

“This isn’t anything that I’m saying or it’s not anything that's groundbreaking, but if you have winning football, winning football should help you fuel other sports,” he said. “It should help fuel enrollment at a university, so we take that very seriously. We want to be an example on our campus, not just on the field, but we want to be an example in the classroom also by how we handle ourselves in the classroom and how we handle ourselves on campus in general. 

But we want to because as we know Johnson C. Smith has long been a basketball school, known as a basketball school, and deservedly so. (Retired coach) Steve Joyner (is) a Hall of Famer, a legend and it just feels good to be able to add to that with our football program having the success that it is having. It should help every sport that we have.”

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