On Oct. 15 the East Tennessee State University football team faced the winless Furman Paladins.
The Buccaneers were coming off a three-game losing streak. In all three games, the Bucs offense struggled, leaving the defense on the field majority of the game.
In the first quarter Andrej Suttles (Dallas, Ga.) scored off a 28-yard pass from quarterback Reese Hannon (Greer, S.C.) to give Furman the early 7-0 lead. Struggling to put together drives, the Bucs defense gave up another passing touchdown, this time, Duncan Fletcher (Columbus, Ga.) caught a nine-yard pass from Reese Hannon to bring the deficit to 14 points for the Bucs.
More of the same as the Bucs gave up another passing touchdown when Andrej Suttles caught a 56-yard strike to finish the first quarter with his second receiving touchdown. The Bucs were down 21-0 to end the first quarter.
“We have got a couple of kids that just need to mature a little bit more,” Torbush said. “Losing hurts, and they express it more than some of the other ones.”
The second quarter didn’t get better as Andy Schumpert (Brentwood, Tenn.) caught a 21-yard touchdown to give Furman a commanding 28-0 lead to start the second quarter.
Running back Richard Hayes III (Greensboro, N.C.) scored on a 2-yard touchdown run to give Furman a 35-0 lead going into halftime.
In the third quarter, the Bucs defense started to give up rushing touchdowns compared to the passing touchdowns in the first half.
Antonio Wilcox (Fitzgerald, Ga.) scored on a 10-yard touchdown run to give Furman a 42-0 lead. To expand the lead more, Triston Luke (Clarksville, Tenn.) scored on a 1-yard touchdown run to give Furman a 49-0 lead over the Buccaneers.
ETSU’s offense could not get going. Starting quarterback Austin Herink (Cleveland, Tenn.) finished eight passes on 21 attempts for just 65 yards.
After a field goal by Furman midway into the fourth quarter to give Furman a 52-0 lead, the Buccaneers finally scored on a Matt Thompson (Morristown, Tenn) 11-yard touchdown run.
The Bucs fell 52-7, dropping their record to 2-4. They’ve now lost four straight games.
“When you look at it now, we could be sitting here right now at 0-6,” Torbush said. “The two games we won, they were hard-fought games.”
With the win, Furman picks up their first win of the season now 1-6.
The problem the Bucs ran into was not getting pressure on the quarterback as Furman finished 20-22 passing for 313 yards and the Bucs gave up 198 rushing yards.
A positive for the Bucs were that they had many attempts on third down, however, they only converted on eight out of 18.
The Bucs next game will be at home Thursday night as they face West Virginia Wesleyan.
