Utah State football coach Charlie Weatherbie stood on a dais at Thursday's Las Vegas Bowl II Kickoff luncheon before hundreds of guests said he was getting so anxious for the game to begin, "I feel like just screaming," Weatherbie said.
Aggie linebacker Jermaine Younger was in the same mood after spending nearly a week on the road, first two days in St. George and then three days in Las Vegas preparing for tonight's game against Ball State in the Sam Boyd Silver Bowl beginning at 6 MST. The game, the first bowl of the season, will be televised live by ESPN."The first day and a half are all right," said a fidgeting Younger, who enjoys a good time in a glamorous town as much as anyone, "but now I'm just ready to play. Today is going to go on forever."
What made the waiting worse is that these two Las Vegas Bowl II entrants, 6-5 Utah State, co-champion of the Big West Conference, and 8-2-1 Ball State, champion of the Mid-American Conference, have had no common opponents, nothing with which to gauge the other's strengths no matter how much film of each other they've watched.
"That's what's hard for us," said Ball State coach Paul Schudel. "We don't have any teams in common. I'm not sure we've played the same caliber of teams they have."
The Aggie schedule, with only six Big West games, included tough nonleague opponents like bowl-bound Utah and BYU as well as Baylor, Louisiana State and Fresno State. Ball State plays eight league games; its nonleague games were Syracuse, Illinois State and Cincinnati.
The only measuring stick might be that the last two BWC/MAC bowl encounters were won by the MAC team in close fashion - 35-34 last year and 28-21 in 1991 - but the Big West leads the series 7-5.
Both Ball State and USU finished their seasons on a roll. The Cardinals won their last four and are unbeaten in the last five; Utah State has won five straight and come from 1-5 to 6-5.
One thing that's clear to the Aggies is that they will probably be hard-pressed to come up with the kind of opponent turnovers they're used to creating. Ball State has lost just six fumbles, and quarterback Mike Neu has thrown only eight interceptions.
"The thing that just jumps out to me about Ball State," says Weatherbie, "is they're a team that does not beat itself. They're disciplined and make a lot of good decisions."
That is very much by design, says Schudel. His philosophy is, "If you turn the ball over, you don't play," and he says his teams have always had positive giveaway/takeaway ratios. "That's why we've been in a lot of games," he says.
"They're really fundamentally sound," says Younger. "They're big and disciplined and don't make a lot of mistakes, and that's always scary. We're like a reckless-abandon type of team, and mistakes are going to happen. A team like that, they'll capitalize so we're going to have to be careful."
Neu, starting for a fourth year at the Cardinal helm, says USU's changing defensive alignments and possible blitzes on every play present a problem. "We're going to have to perform under pressure when they bring stuff at us," he says.
The 6-foot-5 Neu, adept at scrambling, has behind him in the backfield a 229-pound freshman tailback (Mike Blair) who was first-team all-MAC, and a 6-3, 240-pound fullback in Carlos Davis, who was once a defensive lineman. Davis' backup is a 258-pounder. Younger equates those backs with the bruising crew from Baylor. The Aggies did fairly well against the Bears.
The Aggie offensive is built more around speed with smallish backs and receivers who are gone before defenders can wrap up, though Ball State's small, mobile defense could have some say there.
Because the Aggies can strike quickly on Anthony Calvillo's passing, Neu says, "We really don't want to get into a shootout with them. It would be to our advantage if we could control the clock."
Schudel considers it more important to not turn the ball over; he blames turnovers for high-scoring games and says he likes 'em low-scoring and boring. In Ball State's last 15 quarters of play, the opponents did not score a touchdown, much to Schudel's enjoyment.
"They don't like giving up the big play," says Calvillo of his videotape observations of Ball State. Calvillo expects to have to nickel and dime the Cardinals, throwing under the coverage and taking what's given.
While Calvillo and the offense have had their off games, as has the defense, the Aggie senior quarterback seems intent to do well in his last game. Utah State has been to four bowl games in its history and hasn't come close to winning any of them. Calvillo has often cited that record in interviews. "This team wants to go down in history as the first one to win," Calvillo says. "I would like to be part of that, the quarterback of the team that wins."
Adds offensive lineman Jed DeVries, "This team has worked too damn hard out in the snow (in Logan in December) not to win."