After a well-needed two-week layoff, the Bucs will have their hands full when they step back on the field to face the third-ranked Furman Paladins.
“It’s time to go play football again,” said head coach Paul Hamilton. “I’ve never coached in a season that has had so many Saturdays not playing.”
The Bucs really needed the last two weeks as they have had so many injuries this season.
“(From an) injury situation we needed the open date and the time off,” Hamilton said.
The Bucs (2-3, 1-2) will travel to Greenville, S.C., to face Furman (5-1, 4-0), which is ranked third in both the Sports Network and USA Today/ESPN NCAA I-AA polls, in Paladin Stadium on Saturday.
“This is a veteran football team we’re playing against,” said Hamilton of the Paladins’ starting five seniors on offense and eight on defense.
“They have a great chance to be a national championship football team.”
The Buc will also have to find a way to limit the damage from one of the top players in Division I-AA football, last year’s Walter Payton Award winner Louis Ivory.
“You can’t go into a game against Furman and think you can stop Ivory,” said Hamilton. “(You) have to get 11 people around the ball, he’s a guy that starts with great vision and finishes off every run.”
In last season’s contest, Ivory rushed for 227 yards and two touchdowns on 41 carries, but the Bucs still managed to get the victory in Memorial Center off Con Chellis’ 26-yard field goal with 1:12 left in the game which gave ETSU the 23-21 win.
“We’ve been fortunate enough to be successful against them,” Hamilton said. “We respect them and they’re an outstanding team.”
“We’ve been able to make plays that we needed to win against Furman.”
The Bucs, however, have struggled at Paladin Stadium, where they have won just two of 14 meetings. ETSU, though, has won four of the last five games against Furman.
The Buccaneer defense will be looking to build on its performance against The Citadel, in which it kept Maurice Murphy under the 100-yard rushing plateau (92), after allowing Western Carolina’s Fred Boateng (186) and Appalachian State’s Jerry Beard (118) to gain over 100 yards in the team’s first two Southern Conference games.
Hamilton knows his team may not be able to stop Ivory, but they’ll look to make him work for every yard he gains.
“If they can take the ball and run at will on us, they’ll be in control of the football game,” he said. “We’ll have to score a lot of points to be able to win the football game.”
Although the Bucs are not looking past Furman, they know that a tough matchup will be looming one-week from Saturday when they face the No. 1 Georgia Southern Eagles and its All-American fullback Adrian Peterson in Memorial Center.
“It’d be difficult to prepare for Georgia Southern in one week,” Hamilton said.
“We’ve been preparing for Furman, and looking at what we did good in The Citadel game and (we’re hoping) to build on that and get better.”
The Bucs will have to play their very best football of the season if they are going to be successful the next two weeks, going up against two of the top three teams in the nation with two of the best players in Division I-AA football.
“We’ll have be one of the best team’s in America the next two weeks,” Hamilton said. “We’re going to have to play at an extremely high level.”
Even going up against the very best Division I-AA football as to offer, Hamilton believes his team will rise to the occasion.
“I expect us to play well and be a good football team,” he said.
Several Buccaneer players had tremendous success in last year’s game against the Paladins.
Junior Cecil Moore, who leads the conference in receiving yardage (397), yards per game (79.4) and receptions per game (5.20) had five catches for 125 yards and two touchdowns last year.
Senior safety Ocasio Cofield led the team with 15 tackles in last season’s game, six solo.
The kickoff for Saturday’s game is set for 2 p.m.
The Bucs will then host Georgia Southern on Oct. 27 at 6 p.m.

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