Coming off a resounding 43-17 home victory over Texas Lutheran to kick off the season, the Howard Payne Yellow Jackets find themselves alone atop the American Southwest Conference standings. At 1 p.m. Saturday, HPU (1-0, 1-0) ventures to McMurry (0-0, 0-0) looking to remain atop the league standings and start conference play with two straight wins for the first time since 2004.
As for what a 2-0 start to ASC action, and the season, would mean for the Yellow Jackets, first-year head coach Jason Bachtel said, “It’s huge for our program. Yes we were the only conference ball game but when you look and see Howard Payne at the top of the conference standings, that’s a big deal, a big momentum shifter. It’s something to build on and it puts people on notice that we are doing something exciting in Brownwood, Texas. But right now our focus is solely McMurry and we’ll take each week one by one and continue to grow. Overall we’re excited about the direction we’re going, we feel good about it, but we can never be complacent and settle. This week is a new opportunity and our record is 1-0 on the board but it’s 0-0 inside our offices. Our goal is to go 1-0 this week.”
McMurry’s season opener last week against Trinity was cancelled due to COVID concerns, so the War Hawks will be making their 2021 fall debut Saturday. That presents both positives and negatives for Howard Payne in its preparations.
“In the coaching world we always talk about how much improvement there is between Game 1 and Game 2,” Bachtel said. “Our guys now have a ball game in them and I believe we’ll see we are in more game shape than McMurry is. The disadvantage to this ball game is we don’t know what to expect from McMurry. With that being said, we’re just going to go in and adjust to everything and expect the absolute worst. But our kids have a good mindset, every day we challenge them to looks and things we don’t expect, just to be prepared. It’s not going to any different from what we see in practice every day, so I think our guys will be ready to respond to whatever they throw at us.”
During the COVID-imposed spring football campaign, the Yellow Jackets picked up a 24-3 triumph over the War Hawks at Gordon Wood Stadium.
“I don’t expect a whole lot of changes,” Bachtel said in comparing this McMurry squad to the one HPU faced in the spring. “They’ve got their core group in place as far as coaches. They return all 11 on offense and nine of the 11 on defense. You’re going to see a seasoned group of guys who have played in their system, so I don’t expect a whole lot of changes. I expect them to continue to grow with what they’re doing. That’s how programs get to where they want to be, doing what they want to do and doing it really well.”
Reflecting on HPU’s win over Texas Lutheran, the Yellow Jackets churned out 655 yards of total offense – 431 passing and 224 rushing – with only a late turnover.
“We did some thing I thought we could do and we did some things I knew we had in us, we just hadn’t seen,” Bachtel said.
Quarterback Landon McKinney, the ASC Offensive Player of the Week, completed 20 of 31 passes for 353 yards with three scoring tosses, while Nick Infante added 62 yards and a touchdown, completing 4 of 6 attempts.
All-American receiver Jake Parker caught two of the HPU touchdown passes and finished with a team-high five grabs for 93 yards. Fourteen Yellow Jackets caught at least one pass as Jordan Harris and Casey Dufner contributed scoring receptions of 40 and 8 yards, respectively. Otis Lanier finished with three grabs for 43 yards, Josh Aldama added two for 80, and Hunter Cheek (30 yards), Brazos Gadler (29 yards), Collyn Shipley (28 yards), and Javonte Russell (23 yards) also caught two passes apiece.
The Jackets’ ground game was anchored by Stephen Willis with 93 yards, Tauren Bradley with 88 yards and a touchdown, Derrick Berry with 45 yards and Peter McFarlin with 20 yards.
Still, Bachtel sees plenty of room for improvement.
“The biggest thing offensively if you go back and study our film in the first half is we left 24 points out on the field in the first half,” Bachtel said. “It shouldn’t have been a close ball game, a 13-3 game, at the half. We should have had 35 points on the board, so we have to capitalize on some things. We were 7 of 9 inside the red zone, so we have to capitalize on those other chances inside the red zone.”
Defensively, the Yellow Jackets yielded 358 yards – 222 on the ground and 136 through – but just three scoring drives to Texas Lutheran, while forcing a pair of takeaways. ASC Defensive Player of the Week Peyton Lowe logged a team-best 10 tackles including one for loss, followed by Jarrett Brown, Kyle Bell and Riley Butts with six tackles apiece. Butts finished with two tackles for loss, and the Jackets recorded eight as a team. James Jakubowski chipped in five tackles and recovered a fumble.
As was the case with the offense, Bachtel detected areas where HPU needs to improve on defense, as well as special teams.
“Defensively from the spring, huge improvement to give up three first-half points after a botched kick return. That’s a momentum builder,” Bachtel said. “But, we have to tackle better. We missed some tackles early that could have resulted in some fourth-down conversions. We gave them opportunities when they didn’t earn it, and we don’t need to see that stuff happen.
We also have to clean up some stuff in the special teams. We muffed a kick and missed a field goal and extra point.”
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AMERICAN SOUTHWEST CONFERENCE
Conference Overall
Howard Payne 1 0 1 0
Belhaven 0 0 1 0
East Texas Baptist 0 0 1 0
Hardin-Simmons 0 0 1 0
Mary Hardin-Baylor 0 0 1 0
Austin College 0 0 0 0
McMurry 0 0 0 0
Sul Ross 0 0 0 0
Southwestern 0 0 0 1
Texas Lutheran 0 1 0 1
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Week 1 Games
Howard Payne 43, Texas Lutheran 17
East Texas Baptist 37, UW-Platteville 31
Belhaven 56, Millsaps 28
Hardin-Simmons 49, Wayland Baptist 0
Mary Hardin-Baylor 84, Simpson 6
Cal Lutheran 37, Southwestern 7
Austin College, OPEN
McMurry, OPEN
Sul Ross, OPEN
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Week 2 Games
Howard Payne at McMurry
Austin College at Texas Lutheran
Hardin-Simmons at Sul Ross
East Texas Baptist at Mary Hardin-Baylor
Southwestern at Belhaven